Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes: > Well, you have it within your power to do what Craig asks, which he > indicates will stop him from swearing. Do you find those requests -- > ie, to talk about real issues, not pedantic non-events -- unacceptable?
He can make whatever requests he wants, but I have been speaking only about real issues. Regardless, no matter what pedantry a person uses, it does not justify his language, which is a separate topic. Part of the problem here is that some of the values that I think are most important here are regarded by you and some others as mere pedantry. This is exactly what I mean when I say that the compromise embedded in section 5 of the SC has broken down. That compromise allows for non-free to be hosted on Debian, but also says it is "not a part of Debian". Party A thought it didn't matter to them what things were called, but was very concerned that non-free software be made available from the Debian servers, and using the Debian infrastructure. Party B was willing to grudgingly accept the distribution of non-free on the Debian servers and the use of Debian's infrastructure to support it, but provided only that it was clearly regarded as not itself being a part of Debian. Now this is a reasonable compromise. It's also reasonable to seek by GR to write a new arrangement. But the existing compromise, with no GR, must recognize that Party A had to give something up just as Party B did. What Party A had to give up was that it had to accept that the term "Debian" would not properly refer to the non-free stuff, which was "not a part of Debian". I think that Party B made the far more serious concession here, and I find it repugnant that the current Party A people would like to take away even the tiny concession about language which they made. Appropriate language may not matter to you; it obviously doesn't matter to Craig, but it does matter to some of us, and this was exactly what the Party A people agreed to give up in the compromise embedded in section 5 of the SC: that it would be inappropriate and wrong to regard non-free as a part of Debian. Thomas
