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: Results of "social contract" survey



Bruce writes:
> So far Santiago's argument has _not_ convinced me that we should exclude
> programs when the source file can not be changed but the use of patch files
> to modify the program is allowed.
> 
> I agree it's not optimal, and we should encourage people to not restrict
> their source files from being modified.
> 
> I'd be interested in hearing new arguments, but please don't repeat the
> old stuff.

I'm afraid I am going to repeat old arguments, because I feel they
have not been answered.  I don't consider `the dichotomy between
freedom and traceability is false' an answer to these arguments:

1. Maintenance of a piece of free software should not be a monopoly.

One of the key benefits of free software is that if anyone feels that
it is not being maintained to their satisfaction, and that they can do
a better job, they can take it over or fork it and release their own
versions.

Licenses that prevent people other than the copyrightholder from
distributing modified sources prevent this process, which is normal
and expected in the free software world.

Furthermore, the copyrightholder may become unavailable for some
reason, with the result that a piece of free software can become
unmaintainable because noone can get permission to distribute modified
source code.

2. Code-reuse requires the distribution of modified source.

If a program prohibits distribution of modified versions of its source
code then parts of it cannot be taken and incorporated in free
software.

3. `Source' files are sometimes installed directly.

Some packages, eg TeX, have files that are distributed with the source
code and which must be installed on the target system as they are.  If
we are not allowed to distribute modified versions of these files then
we are not allowed to distribute a .deb file which contains our
modification; we would have to patch the file in the postinst.

4. Our source format is a technical decision, and should not be
mandated by a software licence.

The fact that we are going to switch to distributing unmodified
upstream source with patches is an engineering decision that should be
up to the project to take.  We should not be forced into this decision
by the licensing terms of the software we distribute.

If we accept this new laxer definition of freedom now then we may find
that later, if we want to change the source format again, we have
engineered into our product some software whose licence will prevent
us from doing so.

Ian.


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