Re: discussion with the FSF: GPLv3, GFDL, Nexenta On Mon, 4 Jun 2007 20:53:11 +1000 Anthony Towns wrote:

[...]
> To expand on that a bit more: IMHO, Debian is fundamentally about what
> its contributors want -- we're focussed on doing right by our users
> and the free software community, but ultimately, as far as Debian's
> concerned, the first and foremost representatives of both those groups
> are the users and free software community members who actually make
> Debian work.

It seems you are implying that analyzing licenses and spending time to
reply to questions sent to debian-legal is *not* a contribution to the
Debian Project.

If you really think that participating to debian-legal is not a
contribution to the Debian Project, then please have a GR to abolish
this list, so that I can stop wasting my time in dissecting issues and
providing analyses that will get ignored by decision-makers.
I used to be happy with the Debian Project having a transparent and open
license analysis process, but it seems that this is just hypocrisy: the
real decisions about which packages are acceptable for main are taken by
a few people who seem to deliberately ignore any advice from
debian-legal.
Just like the FSF and OSI, who accept or reject licenses behind closed
doors, without any real public explanation of the rationale...

Your attitude towards debian-legal participants and towards non-DDs is
rather insulting and does not encourage me to consider the idea of
applying for the NM process.

[...]
> And when analysis of licenses tends to amount to not
> much more than "we've discussed this issue already, it's not free"
> there's not much point to the debate at all, afaics.

On the contrary, you could read the archived discussions and explain why
you think the arguments made are invalid.
I think there's not much point in repeating arguments that have already
been made in the past (and are publicly archived for future reference),
unless new data or counter-arguments are provided.

> 
> But if no one on -legal sees what I'm trying to get at by now, I guess
> there's not much point to this debate either.

Frankly speaking, it seems to me that you are trying to persuade
debian-legal regulars to act as "yes men" who blindly follow what the
majority of the "open source" community does.
Hence, it seems you're trying to make debian-legal become pointless and
useless.


-- 
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..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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