Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 07:34:22PM +0200, Francesco Poli wrote: > > As a consequence I began adding the disclaimers to my messages, in > > order to explicitly remind readers about the above facts. > > > Now, you say that those disclaimers are a waste of time... > > > I'm really puzzled. > > The real issue is not that you were posting without disclaimers. The real > issue is that you post to debian-legal with *content* that is inappropriate > *because* you are not a lawyer or a Debian developer. > > When someone posts to debian-legal asking for help figuring out if a license > is ok for Debian main, and you respond saying that it isn't because of > license feature X; and you are well aware that the ftpmasters have > previously and consciously accepted other licenses into main with that same > feature, and have not been swayed by your arguments; that's not appropriate. > This list doesn't exist to serve as a soapbox for non-DDs to promote their > own interpretations of the DFSG, it's here to help maintainers (and > ftpmasters) figure out what packages Debian can distribute and in what > section of the archive. > > When you repeatedly push interpretations of the DFSG that you *know* are > inconsistent with how the ftpmasters operate, that's an abuse of > debian-legal, regardless of how many disclaimers you stick on the end of it.
Your complaint is separate from Anthony Towns' complaints. Anthony Towns was specifically complaining that someone might mistake Francesco's emails for some sort of official statement. Your complaint, on the other hand, is just as valid or invalid whether Francesco is a Debian developer or not. However, the description of the list says: debian-legal mailing list Copyright, licensing and patent issues Discussions about legality issues such as copyrights, patents etc. It does not restrict itself to dispensing the decisions of the ftp-masters. In fact, debian-legal is the most appropriate place to try to change the minds of people with regards to legal issues in Debian. Even if you are not a Debian Developer. In particular, it is appropriate to try to get people not to use bad licenses for software being packaged in Debian. You may have a different opinion on what "bad" (as opposed to non-DFSG free) means, which is why the list is open for discussion. Since Francesco does make pains to point out when he disagrees with official policy, I see nothing wrong with his posts. Cheers, Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
