On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 02:39:07PM -0800, Don Armstrong wrote: > I'm getting lost here. Do you mean that we should (in the context of > the Andrew's proposed SC)
I haven't looked through Andrew's proposed SC in any detail. I wouldn't presume to comment on it or its implications. > > > It's at least not acting in the best interest of a subset of users > > > who happen to fall afoul of the license terms with are > > > incompatible with the DFSG. > > I don't believe we have anything in main that people are likely to > > automatically violate the license > Perhaps, but that's only because we've been effectively applying at > least some of the DFSG to all of the works in main. That we would seem > to have an unwritten rule as to which works we apply the complete DFSG > to, and which works we apply part of, seems quite strange. > Every time I attempt to reconsile our current official policy with the > current Social Contract I fail miserably. If you trying to derive one from the other, exclusively, sure, you should fail miserably. The Social Contract is meant to prescribe the ideals which should inform all our activities; what we actually do is meant to be whatever comes closest to those ideals given the practical constraints we actually have. Like saying "everyone should live in unlimited prosperity and absolute freedom", then having policies that restrict people's freedoms to drink too much because they end up throwing up on other people's lawns, or having progressive taxation and welfare payouts. Having too much detail in the social contract obscures our goals and defeats the purpose of the document; ignoring the details in actual policies and behaviours means you get inferior results and do an even worse job of meeting your goals. > They're portions of source to programs that happen to be included as > part of a piece of documentation. Does that transform them into just > examples in documentation to which we don't apply the DFSG? When do we > start applying the DFSG? No, if you use them as examples in a piece of documentation, they're examples. If they're used as programs, they're programs. If they're put in a file with a .info extension just to try to avoid our policies, then the maintainer's being an idiot. > > > Either way, who should be making this distinction between source > > > and documentation? > > People who're able to, obviously... </ObShot> > I'm interested in the context of Debian. Who (in the Debian power > structure) is able to make a decision as to which works are > documentation, and which works are source? Should this be left to the > ftpmasters? Anyone who's able to can make the distinction all they like. At the moment, it seems like you're not able to, which is odd, but whatever. The people who need to make the decision are, primarily, the maintainer, and secondarily ftpmaster. (Or if there are serious conflicts, the tech ctte. Or if there's a difference of opinion and a third opinion is needed, people on -devel. etc.) > > > That may be an appropriate argument to keep them packaged in > > > non-free, > > Well, no. The Debian system doesn't include non-free. Personally, I > > think an operating systems needs to be documented almost as much as > > it needs to boot; if it isn't or doesn't, we've failed in a far more > > substantial way than if we have some imperfectly free stuff in it, > > like, say the preamble to the GPL, or one of RMS's manifestos. > I still can't find the qualitative difference between this position, > and "an operating system needs X almost as much as it needs to boot" > where X is netscape, java, microsoft word, or some other "essential" > piece of a modern operating system. Uh, "documentation" is obviously qualitatively different to any particular piece of software. For that matter "booting" (or, in general "being usable" or "working as designed") is qualitatively different to any particular piece of software too. One's an ability to do something in particular, the other's a quality of how you do whatever particular things you can do -- ie "by following some instructions, rather than guessing" or "at all, rather than not at all". If you can't see it yourself, I'm not sure I can help you though. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could. http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004
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