On Wednesday, March 12, 2014 22:23:02 Russ Allbery wrote: > Scott Kitterman <deb...@kitterman.com> writes: > > On Wednesday, March 12, 2014 23:22:13 Steve M. Robbins wrote: > >> On March 12, 2014 03:29:52 PM Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote: > >>> SC§1 states that we want Debian to remain 100% free; the common > >>> interpretation of that is that one can download anything from Debian > >>> main and only get DFSG-free material; I think our sources are held to > >>> the same expectation. > >> > >> That's never been my expectation, FWIW. I do agree with Ian that this > >> is stretching the goals of the project, at least as I perceive them. > > > > What percentage of free software in Debian main do you expect then? > > Absolutes have the benefit of simplicity and the disadvantage of not > modeling the world all that well. Sometimes the simplicity and universal > guarantee is still worth it, but at the same time I think it's worth > realizing there are places where absolutes create weird corners. > > The part of free software that clearly matters the most is the software we > provide to users to run, namely the contents of our binary packages and > the source that produces them. That doesn't mean that nothing else is > important, but I think it's fairly clear that's what's *most* important. > > Of the files that are not part of that set, there are a variety of cases, > which have varying negative effects. The worst would be some file that's > under a license with distribution restrictions. That may not be > redistributable at all, and even if it is for us, it might cause problems > for some downstream that wants to sell source CDs, etc. I think those are > clearly not okay. > > Then there are files like RFCs that are under a non-DFSG license because > they have weird restrictions on modification, but are freely distributable > without modification. If these were installed in binary packages, they > represent a clear problem, albeit usually a very frustrating one since > it's highly unlikely that the restriction on RFC modification would ever > actually be enforced by anyone. When they're only present in source > packages, it's much harder to construct a scenario in which this matters. > And it's very unclear why anyone would start from our source packages to > modify RFCs instead of downloading them from all over the Internet. But > it doesn't follow some of our guarantees for what one can do with > everything one downloads from our archives. > > The case we're talking about here are files that are covered by a DFSG > license but are not accompanied by source. These don't cause us or our > downstreams any legal problems, and it's quite difficult to construct a > likely scenario in which they cause any problems for our users either. > Those files are not *useful* -- they are, in essence, random trash -- but > they're a bit like litter. Against our rules, but not clearly able to > cause anyone concrete problems. > > Farther down that chain are files that are under a DFSG license but are > not source, where the source no longer, so far as anyone knows, exists. > Those are still technical violations of the DFSG, but the violation is > very technical and arguable. (If no one *has* the source, then whatever > still exists is arguably now the preferred form of modification.) Those > are already accepted into the archive (even in binary packages), because > it's even harder to see any way in which they're really hurting anyone, > and sometimes that's the only form in which still-useful documentation is > available. > > And then there are license texts, many of which (such as the GPL) are > covered by blatantly non-DFSG licenses themselves, but which are always > acceptable in the archive and installed on every Debian system. Because > we decided license texts were special and don't count as software for DFSG > purposes. > > This stuff isn't *actually* black and white. We can *make* it black and > white because we want simple rules even if they're sometimes weird, but > the contents of distributions themselves are full of weird edge cases.
I think it's black and white if it's a bug. If it's worth investing the effort in fixing the bug is all kinds of shades of gray. If we're going to have the rule be that source in the preferred form of modification is only required when the license requires it, then we should change the rules of the project to match. DFSG #2 is not at all vague about what it requires. Additionally, I disagree that the freeness of the packages we give our users so they can modify the software is substantially less important than the freeness of the packages we give them to run. (recognizing that as a practically matter, compromises get made). Scott K -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/19106895.lMhg2AU34Z@scott-latitude-e6320
