DFSG claims BSD, not BSD 2/3-clause, is DFSG-free
Dear all, during my ongoing NM process, I have been asked to review several Debian documents and propose any changes I would like to see. While, to put it bluntly, I think the Debian Constitution is written somewhat sloppily, it's most likely not worth going through a GR to get what amounts to janitorial work through. Something that _can_ easily be changed (afaik) is that the DFSG[1] states that 'The GPL, BSD, and Artistic licenses are examples of licenses that we consider free.' It's quite obvious that this refers to 2- and 3- clause BSD, not 4-clause BSD. Still, that's not what it says. Same as above, this is mainly janitorial, but still valid. As I honestly don't know where to take this, I decided to open this can of worms here. Thanks, Richard PS: If anyone's seriously interested in the barrel or container of worms of clean up the Debian Constitution a bit and see those changes implemented, maybe we should do that in another thread. PPS: Same as whitespace commits, this type or janitorial work can be rather political or even religious. I do not intend to offend your FSM. Promise. [1] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cad77+gsop_mwf7gcrus+t83nehxszk0q0wt02f0cl3q_snm...@mail.gmail.com
Re: DFSG claims BSD, not BSD 2/3-clause, is DFSG-free
Perhaps you'd be interested in 20130105150458.ga6...@vasudev.homelinux.net Cheers, Paul On Sun, Jul 14, 2013 at 2:30 PM, Richard Hartmann richih.mailingl...@gmail.com wrote: Dear all, during my ongoing NM process, I have been asked to review several Debian documents and propose any changes I would like to see. While, to put it bluntly, I think the Debian Constitution is written somewhat sloppily, it's most likely not worth going through a GR to get what amounts to janitorial work through. Something that _can_ easily be changed (afaik) is that the DFSG[1] states that 'The GPL, BSD, and Artistic licenses are examples of licenses that we consider free.' It's quite obvious that this refers to 2- and 3- clause BSD, not 4-clause BSD. Still, that's not what it says. Same as above, this is mainly janitorial, but still valid. As I honestly don't know where to take this, I decided to open this can of worms here. Thanks, Richard PS: If anyone's seriously interested in the barrel or container of worms of clean up the Debian Constitution a bit and see those changes implemented, maybe we should do that in another thread. PPS: Same as whitespace commits, this type or janitorial work can be rather political or even religious. I do not intend to offend your FSM. Promise. [1] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cad77+gsop_mwf7gcrus+t83nehxszk0q0wt02f0cl3q_snm...@mail.gmail.com -- All programmers are playwrights, and all computers are lousy actors. #define sizeof(x) rand() :wq -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cao6p2qtfuherrkzolcxeujgpvxq5hxodmgg1etqyq-yidrq...@mail.gmail.com
Re: DFSG claims BSD, not BSD 2/3-clause, is DFSG-free
Richard Hartmann richih.mailingl...@gmail.com writes: Something that _can_ easily be changed (afaik) is that the DFSG[1] states that 'The GPL, BSD, and Artistic licenses are examples of licenses that we consider free.' It's quite obvious that this refers to 2- and 3- clause BSD, not 4-clause BSD. It is? The 4-clause BSD license is also DFSG-free. We have a bunch of 4-clause BSD licensed software in the archive. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/871u71gf9n@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: DFSG claims BSD, not BSD 2/3-clause, is DFSG-free
On Sun, Jul 14, 2013 at 11:36:36AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: Richard Hartmann richih.mailingl...@gmail.com writes: Something that _can_ easily be changed (afaik) is that the DFSG[1] states that 'The GPL, BSD, and Artistic licenses are examples of licenses that we consider free.' It's quite obvious that this refers to 2- and 3- clause BSD, not 4-clause BSD. It is? The 4-clause BSD license is also DFSG-free. We have a bunch of 4-clause BSD licensed software in the archive. The GPL incompatability might have tricked folks who aren't carefully reading into thinking it's not free. Either way, there's a more general point about DFSG 10, which has been brought up a few times (usually by folks who assume the DFSG is the letter of the law, whereas they're actually guidelines.) My 2c, Paul -- .''`. Paul Tagliamonte paul...@debian.org : :' : Proud Debian Developer `. `'` 4096R / 8F04 9AD8 2C92 066C 7352 D28A 7B58 5B30 807C 2A87 `- http://people.debian.org/~paultag signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: DFSG claims BSD, not BSD 2/3-clause, is DFSG-free
* Richard Hartmann: Something that _can_ easily be changed (afaik) is that the DFSG[1] states that 'The GPL, BSD, and Artistic licenses are examples of licenses that we consider free.' It's quite obvious that this refers to 2- and 3- clause BSD, not 4-clause BSD. The BSD hyperlink in the quote above used to refer to the text of the 4-clause version. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87d2qlymry@mid.deneb.enyo.de
