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

On Tue, 17 Jun 1997, Santiago Vila Doncel wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> On Tue, 17 Jun 1997, Dale Scheetz wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 17 Jun 1997, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > 
> > > 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.
> > 
> > Just saying something is true doesn't make it so.
> 
> Just saying "Just saying something is true doesn't make it so" doesn't
> make it false :-)
> 
> > I don't see how requiring distribution of the source unmodified prevents
> > maintianing modification through diff files. Our packaging system even
> > supports this method without effort.
> 
> If the author dies or become unavailable, diffs could become much greater
> than the original source, which would be absurd and ugly (to name a few).
> We don't want this to happen to any of our packages, do we? What if a
> package becomes unmaintained and the new maintainer decides to release the
> diffs under the same "license"? Do we have to keep the "original" diffs
> (from the new upstream author) "untouched" also? I think this would be
> ridiculous.

We are discussing an area that is not just vague to me, but also to the
lawyers.
When I sign contracts dealing with copyright material that I hold the
copyright on, the contract always specifies that the second party has the
right to purchase the copyright from my estate.
Oviously there is nothing to sell here. In addition most dead authors have
little interest in persuing copyright infringement ;-)
It's not clear to me what becomes of the copyright restrictions after the
author is dead.
In addition, copyrights have a limited life expectancy. I haven't seen
anyone try to deal with that issue with reguard to free software and its
copyright.

> 
> > [ ... ]
> > > 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.
> > 
> > I agree here, but also think that protecting the authors concept and
> > implimentation is what this issue is really about. I don't see that it
> > "weakens" the Free Software community at all. Actually I see this as
> > potentially encouraging more software development for the Free Software
> > market.
> 
> By encouraging the "Almost-Free Software Market" we are discouraging the
> real "Free Software Market".
> 
> > This requirement does not impede modification or improvement of the
> > software. It simply protects the author from being required to take
> > responsibility for changes made down stream that, from his perspective are
> > inappropriate or broken in concept.
> 
> The original author has not even to take the responsability of his own
> programs, since free software has no warranty.
> 
Have you looked at a proprietary license lately. Nobody warrants software
to be, or do, anything. I've often thought that used car salesmen would
love such a warranty on their product.
The reasons for this are obvious. It stems from the statement: "It is
impossible to develope fool proof software, because fools are so damned
ingenious!". If you use the software properly it may actually do what is
expected. Consider the rm command, for instance. "rm -R /*" is a perfectly
well formed rm command, with less than useful results. The structure of
the warranty keeps the creater of the rm command from being liable under
the above circumstances.

Luck,

Dwarf
-- 
_-_-_-_-_-_-                                          _-_-_-_-_-_-_-

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

_-_-_-_-_-_- If you don't see what you want, just ask _-_-_-_-_-_-_-


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