discuss: Re: [Fwd: Re: LSM in Bordeaux]
Subject:
Re: [Fwd: Re: LSM in Bordeaux]
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
13 Jul 2004 19:07:48 -0000
Message-Id: <20040713181214.GC1087@davespc>
On Sun, Jul 11, 2004 at 02:14:43PM -0600, doug jensen wrote:
>
> The DFSG is focused on all software, programs and documentation, equally.
> That was validated by a recent vote of the Debian developers.
> Documentation with restrictive licenses will be removed after the next
> stable release. IMHO this is only fair, to apply the same rules to all
> contributions.
>
I'm sorry to hear that the DFSG still exists. A free license needs to
be restrictive to those who would like to abuse it. A free license must
restrict the license under which any modified work is issued. Otherwise
one could modify the work and issue a very non-free license for the
modified work.
DFSG is flawed because it lists the things which a license may not
restrict. Instead, the DFSG needs to list the rights which the license
must grant. For example, suppose the license is null (contains only the
sentence "have a nice day" etc.). Then one could claim that this license
doesn't restrict anything. But of course it does in a way since
copyright law prohibits anyone from making copies of the work unless the
license grants that right. Thus one can claim that a null license is
very restrictive since copyright law is very restrictive. Which claim
is valid? I think the 2nd one is more valid. However, to clarify
matters and be unambiguous, DFSG should state the rights that the
license must grant to overcome the restrictions of copyright law. But
it doesn't.
The other problems it fails to address is that of adding advertising to
documents and maintaining (more precisely not maintaining) websites with
unreasonably stale documentation (like 10 years out-of-date) which is
not labeled as such. Another problem is that of incompetent or
malicious modification, and that's happened at LDP.
The above problems are important for documentation and not very
significant for software. It's also a shame that the Open Source
Definition (TM) just used DFSG.
David Lawyer
