-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Craig Sanders wrote: | On Sun, Apr 04, 2004 at 01:38:15PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: | |>Craig Sanders wrote: |> |> |>>On Sat, Mar 27, 2004 at 05:05:57PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote: |>> |>>>This would clarify the main point that has been spawning endless attempts |>>>by occasional maintainers to sneak non-free stuff into "main". |>> |>>what "endless attempts" would these be? have there been any incidents in |>>the real world (i.e. outside of your fevered imagination)? |> |>Oh, let's see, "firmware" in the kernel, GFDL docs, boot sectors, RFCs, and |>that's off the top of my head. Mindi/mondo (which contained, among other |>things, pico). Those enough "incidents" for you? | | | actually, NONE of them are incidents of maintainers *attempting* to *sneak* | non-free stuff into main. | | "attempt" and "sneak" indicate a deliberate and active deception, when all of | the "incidents" you mention are actually cases of either a) insufficient care | and attention being paid to license issues, or b) trusting the upstream | developers (e.g. the kernel). i.e. sloppiness and/or trust rather than deceit. Herbert Xu knows of non-free firmware in the kernel sources and is leaving it in main until someone else finds it. That's certainly deliberate and active, if not deception.
Mindi-kernel was put in with a "source" tar.gz consisting entirely of unsourced binaries; it's hard to imagine how the maintainer could possibly have missed that, or thought that it was OK. Admittedly, many of the others are due to confusion on the part of maintainers who think (presumably because of the nonsense puffed out over the years) that the DFSG doesn't apply to documentation. | as for RFCs and other documentation, the jury is still out on whether they can | be included in main. no final decision has been made. you shouldn't pre-empt | that decision by declaring them to be an attempt to sneak non-free stuff in | main. for years (since the start of Debian), they HAVE been considered free | enough to go in main. AJ Towns actually referred me to a thread from 1999 in which Joey Hess disagreed strongly.... http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/1999/debian-legal-199910/msg00099.html | it's only the loony exteremists who have been trying to | kick out GNU documentation in the last few years to make a stupid point (and, | presumably, to prove that they are Holier Than Stallman). Nope, it's not to 'make a stupid point'. There are straightforward, practical reasons for concluding that they are non-free (and furthermore a pain in the neck). I came to this originally because the GCC manual contains an Invariant Section which is really inaccurate for GCC ("Funding Free Software", which is rather obsolete, and describes some theoretical funding method totally different from that actually used to pay for GCC) -- and it can't be changed. |>>you bigots lost the vote (you didn't even come close) - can't you please |>>just shut up and go away? |> |>Um, I have nothing against having "non-free", I'm against having non-free |>stuff in "main". Hello?!? Not the same thing. | | | they're the same old lies, though, and we've heard them over and over again. No lies; I have evidence for everything I said. *sigh* | the actual "incidents" that have occurred are so trivial that they have to be | sexed-up (to use a currently fashionable term) to make them seem relevant and | interesting....it's hard to get people outraged over trivial and boring | mistakes, so they have to be turned into "sneaky attempts" Feel free to call them "trivial" if you like; I disagree. |>> do you really have to try to continue the |>>"discussion", by any desperate means possible? | | | obviously you do. | | please don't. it's boring. Obviously not to you, or you wouldn't keep replying. ;-) | craig | -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAdgwXRGZ0aC4lkIIRAmerAJ9GAmjv9yYwuvx3fa226372VS0/4ACeN+Lf 1V97Og+9bUxTY+A71U4ac9k= =XsSN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
