FS/OSS license: not quite enough of a requirement

[Alexandre Oliva]

On May 12, 2007, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:

> Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> On May 12, 2007, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:

>> 
>> My actual point has been the same all the way from the beginning.
>> 
>> Is Fedora committed to respecting its users' freedoms?

> You just did it again.  Just drop asking these abstract questions
> and try be specific.

And then, when I go down to the details, it's regarded as rhetorics,
or ignored.  How is any of these attitudes helpful?

But you're right, my question was inappropriate.  It was missing "with
regards to all the software it distributes", and a reference to the
FSD for the meaning of the term "freedoms".

> The answers depend on your definition of freedom

FSD, I thought that was clear.

I'm working on a document that will hopefully make things clearer.

>>> Then write up a draft policy following instructions at
>>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Committee#head-bc786fd8400956418c30ac87c30733f0c008b146
>> 
>> Remember that message where I stated that I realized my proposal did
>> not fully match current practice (non-Free firmware)?  It was in reply
>> to this.  But I asked for feedback before going ahead.  Is it so
>> urgent to drive me elsewhere, or did you just miss the bit about
>> asking for comments too?

> The way you ask for comments in guidelines is the process I have just
> outlined here.

Except that presenting a draft if people don't even understand why any
change is needed will just get the draft discarded as pointless, so it
would be wasting my time and yours.

Unless I can understand what it is that you're missing or
misunderstanding from what I'm saying, and you can understand what I'm
missing or misunderstanding in what you're saying, we're going to keep
on failing to communicate, and we'll get nowhere.

Once we clear that up, it can be included in the draft document, even
if only in a rationale portion thereof, and then it's going to be
useful.

Or is this process of clarifying, understanding and discussing part of
the post-drafting process?  This is not clear from the documented
process, which makes me very wary of entering it right away.

> GPL is a license. It can be modified.

Except that it's a copyrighted document and its license does not
permit modification.

  Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
  license document, but changing it is not allowed.

> That's entirely different question from
> whether content under a license is modifiable or not.

The GPL itself cannot be modified.  Most licenses are like that.  Now,
what?  Drop it all on the floor because every package contains a
fragment that cannot be modified or removed?

> By your abstract definitions of freedom, even GPL as license text
> shouldn't be allowed in Fedora.

Except that the GPL is not software.  My abstract definition of
freedom is applied to software, because that's where the freedoms are
essential.

> Hence the need for details.  This is a very complex problem.

I realize that.  I'm willing to provide the details.  But saying
you're going to ask someone else what I mean, perhaps assuming I'm a
proxy for someone else, is not exactly respectful.

If you want to understand what I mean, how about asking me, instead of
disqualifying my attempts at clarifying what I mean as mere rhetorics?

> If you choose to recognize that it is a complex problem and the
> answers are far from simple then you wouldn't be asking questions
> like whether we support freedom or not.

I thought we'd been working long enough on this for at least you to
understand what I mean when I write "users' freedoms".  This is quite
disappointing, because it feels like we've gone through this for a
number of times already :-(

It feels like the very act of trying to clarify what I mean

> is pointless, abstract and serves no purpose.

:-(

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}