* Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-08-26 14:34]: > There appears to be confusion regarding the intended presence of GNU > FDL-licensed works in sarge.
> I personally see no ambiguity at all in clause one of Social > Contract on this point; everything that is part of the "Debian > GNU/Linux Distribution" must be Free Software. The only exception > > Can you offer the Project your interpretation of clause one of the > Social Contract? I agree that all software distributed with Debian must be Free Software (as defined by the DFSG). In a more general sense, I also agree that Debian as a whole must be a free system. That is, that those bits and pieces which are distributed with Debian that are not software (documentation, data) must be "free". However, it is my impression that there's currently no unequivocal consensus what it means for data or documentation to be "free". I know that -legal has a fairly clear position on this, but we have seen that others disagree with this position. First, Richard Stallman argued that a different kind of freedom should apply to documentation than to software. Second, some maintainers faced with bug reports saying that their use of the Debian logo is non-free have not bought -legal's argumentation. Please note that in listing those two cases, I'm not taking taking any sides. I'm merely showing that more discussion is needed when it comes to the question of what freedom means in the context of documentation and data. However, I'm pretty sure that you want a more committal statement than this. So let me clearly state that, yes, I believe the GNU FDL is very problematic (I also believe the official logo should be replaced with the open use logo). At the same time, I've asked the Release Manager to postpone this issue until after sarge. I believe that a hasty removal of GFDL-licensed documentation at this stage would be very counterproductive. While the removal would be a small gain in the short run, it would be a great loss for the whole community in the log run because it would give us less incentive to get the GFDL changed and put us in a worse position to do so. > If you share my interpretation of it, do you feel it is wise for us > to knowingly and deliberately violate our Social Contract with the > Free Software community thus? I think that we have a great responsibility for the whole Free Software community. I believe that we have to abide by the Social Contract, and I think that in addition we have the responsibility to create more freedom. We should talk to license authors and try to get more licenses in line with the DFSG (see one of my recent -legal postings). Removing GFDL documents would bring back our freedom, but it would not actually create any new freedom since the GFDL documents would still not be free. I further believe that a temporary loss of some freedom (i.e. keeping the GFDL documents) is acceptable in order to gain much more freedom (making the GFDL truly free) -- not just for us, but for the whole Free Software community. Of course this belief is based on the premise that we would be in a worse position to make the GFDL free if we removed the GFDL documents now. While this might not be the case, I believe that it is so, based on various discussions I have had. It's a matter of politics and tactics, and my choice might be wrong; I don't think it is, though. I think that since the time when you've made your original posting there has been tremendous progress in the discussions about changing the GFDL. A committee has been created to foster a solid discussion on this matter. I was very sad to see the heated discussions on -legal which didn't do any good at all, and I'm very delighted to finally see a productive discussion on this topic. The GFDL committee had it's first conference call a few days ago and I expect a report to the published soon. I think this is the way to go, and I'm glad Debian fulfils its role as the protector and creator of freedom. And, by the way, while I think that Debian fulfils this role much better than many other organizations, we have never been perfect either. I'd just like to remind you that we had a fair number of GPLed packages linked against SSL and we even released with those packages. However, I don't want to use this example to justify further violations; I'm also not happy that some people think the current GFDL discussion might imply that all issues about non-freeness can be treated as "sarge-ignore". This is certainly not the case! -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED]
