On Tue, Jan 20, 2004 at 03:14:30PM -0500, Anthony DeRobertis wrote: > Raul Miller | Andrew Suffield > 1. Debian will remain 100% free | 1. Debian will remain 100% free > software | > > Pretty much the same thing. Slight wording difference.
Well, except for the ambiguity of what "100% free" means without the word "software". "Free software" is very specific, because of the DFSG. Also note that sections 2-4 should be nearly identical between our proposals. [Neither of us has presented any rationale for changing those sections.] ... > Raul adds in a transition phrase and the word "internet" (Raul: isn't > Internet capitalized?). Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I'm using it as an adjective, not as a noun, not as a trademark, and not as part of a title. It's my impression that lower case is better here. ... > Raul Miller | Andrew Suffield > --------------------------------------|------------------------------------ > The software in "non-free" | The > satisfies some, but not all, of our | packages in these areas are not part > guidelines | of the Debian system, although they > | have been configured for use with > | Debian. > > These are fairly different. Raul does not include the statement that > these are not part of Debian. Doesn't leaving that out cause a > problem when compared to clause 1? Could you be more specific? In my mind, that "not a part of Debian" meant "not a part of main". Anyways, if leaving it out creates a problem, I'd like to understand what the probem is so I can fix it. ... > Also, I'm not sure that software in non-free has to satisfy any of the > guidelines. Certainly not DFSG 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10. I'm not sure > why they'd have to satisfy 7 or 9, either, provided it is still legal for > Debian to distribute it. So this may be a material change. If this is a material change, we might have to stop distributing some package. To my knowledge, we wouldn't -- as I understand it, every package we distrbute in non-free satisfies at least some of our guidelines. But if we are distributing some package which satisfies none of our guidelines, I guess I'm assuming we can live without it. ... > Raul's wording covers more than CD manufacturers. Raul's wording also > seems to suggest that we guarantee the distributability of software > in main. Yes. Guaranteeing the distributability of software in main is one of the major points our guidelines address. > Raul does not state we provide our bug tracking system for non-free > packages, which Andrew does. If we make that statement at all, we should certainly include main. I elected to remove the statement from section 5. We already indicate in sections 2 and 3 that we track bugs, and section 4 indicates that we're going to make choices in the best interests of our users. Since I've also gotten rid of the overly ambiguous "not in debian" statement, I don't think I need to spell this issue out any further. [p.s. I'm still thinking about whether "free software community", "Free Software community" or "Free Software Community" is best. I'm not sure how I'd even make such a choice -- it's certainly not something I've spent any time thinking about.] Thanks, -- Raul
