Michio Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Is not looking bad more important than getting it right eventually? > (Start aliasing [EMAIL PROTECTED] to /dev/null: a big BTS looks bad.)
Nngh. > Another irony. I thought Matthew Garrett usually argued for > changing views at the drop of a hat. For example, changing > position and letting the project sell stuff near the end of > http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/09/msg00091.html > even though saying "we used to say that we wouldn't compete > with debian retailers, but now we've decided that we will" > looks astonishingly bad. You seem to have misunderstood me. I'm not saying that changing our minds on things is bad. I'm saying that diverging from the rest of the community for no good reason looks bad. It's hardly as if patch clauses were badly understood when the DFSG were written. There's no way you can claim "Oh, they didn't know what they were talking about". The people who wrote this document considered the issue and decided that the practical implications were not sufficiently offensive to avoid describing them as free. Since then, the practical freedoms provided by patch clauses have increased. Altering the DFSG would be a clear redefinition of our stance on freedom, and there would be no way that anyone could argue that it was in any way in line with community consensus. Do I think that would look bad? Yes, I do. The DFSG should reflect reality, like our website should do. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] My preferred name is "you" -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]