The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.

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Re: Definition of "free" (was: New Package: defrag 0.6-1)



Brian C White <bcwhite@verisim.com> writes:

> I disagree!  If it's free of cost and free of usage restrictions,
> then why must it go in "non-free"?  I don't think that an author's
> choice of whether or not to reveal his/her source is relavent.  I
> don't think "freely modifiable" is a necessary property for software
> in the main distribution.
>
> If you want to get right down to the nitty gritty, the only truely
> "free" form of software is public domain.  For all the FSF's
> high-handed talk about "free software", I am not free to use their
> work in any way I please.

We are really dealing with two separate issues -- what should go in
the main Debian distribution and what gets to be called "freeware".
They are different questions, but I think the answer is the same.

The following text is from a larger work-in-progress, so please do not
resend it.  I'm trying to answer "what is free software", but I find
it a difficult question to objectively answer.

If you have any comments, please consider sending them to just me
instead of annoying the entire list.

------- start of cut text --------------
What is Free Software?

There is some disagreement in the community of free software authors
about the exact definition of free software.  The free software
movement has recently gained tremendous popularity.  Testaments to
this are the success of free operating systems such as Linux and BSD,
the Free Software Foundation's GNU project, the MIT X Window System,
the Perl programming language, and thousands of other software
packages.  The growth of the Internet has made the distribution of
free software inexpensive and easy.  The Internet has also made it
possible, even easy, for free software authors to work together --
virtually all free software development happens through the Internet.
As things grow, there is a larger community of authors and a more
diverse body of opinion on the subject of free software.  If an author
wants to be considered part of the free software movement, he will
insist that his software is also free.

It could be claimed, then, that the answer to the question, ``what is
free software?'' is subjective and arbitrary.  But, if we take into
account that free software is liberated by virtue of the license of
the software, it is possible to answer the question objectively.
There are several popular software licenses that are used or closely
mimicked throughout the free software community.  An examination of
those licenses, their similarities and differences, can help us get
closer to the answer.  In addition, we can also examine the licenses
of several of the most popular software packages that are universally
acknowledged to be free software.

The two most popular and oft-mimicked software licenses are these used
by the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) for the Berkeley
Software Distribution (BSD) and the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Interestingly, both of those projects share the goal of creating a
UNIX or UNIX-like operating system.

Some of the more popular free software packages (that offer a
different license than the GPL or the UCB license) are the Perl
programming language, MIT's X Window System, and the TeX document
preparation system.

Using those licenses, we can make two major distinctions between
non-free software (note that commercial software is not always
synonymous with non-free software, but the terms are often used
interchangeably) and free software (For purposes of this discussion,
free software is a program licensed under the GPL, the UCB license, or
one of the software packages mentioned above).  The first is that free
software may be changed using ``the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it.'' [GPL]  The second is that free software
may be distributed by anyone (even for a profit) and used by anyone
(for any application).

Once an author begins making restrictions on what type of
modifications can be made, how the software can be distributed, and
its use, it becomes less clear whether the work remains free software.

Another definition is that free software is everything that is at
least as free as software licensed under one of the GPL, the UCB
license, and the Perl Artistic License.  Several distributors of free
software, such as the Debian Linux Association and Yggdrasil
Computing, more or less follow this definition in deciding what
software to distribute as free software.
------- end ----------------------------

-- 
Daniel Quinlan                  http://www.pathname.com/~quinlan
quinlan@pathname.com            quinlan@transmeta.com (at work)

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