Re:"Social Contract" [anti-trust]

[bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

From: alegre@saturn.superlink.net (Fernando)
> *) We have to ask ourselves seriously whether we are in fact just working
> for free for CD resellers.

You will notice that the Official 2-CD Set now sells for $4.95 through
LSL. LSL also has the list of maintainers, and will send you the set
for free if you ask for it. At this rate, CD manufacturers are getting
a fair return for distributing our software and no more, and I
appreciate that we do not have to run our own CD business just to get
Debian into people's hands. We are not working for them for free. There
is still the possibility that someone could sell Debian for $1000.
However, as long as they can not prevent others from selling it for
$4.95, we can live with that.

> *) Are we trying to discourage restrictions made by authors in part
> because we want to protect CD resellers?

We want it to be very easy for CD resellers to sell (or give away)
Debian. People who would derive products from Debian, such as systems
for vertical markets, should be able to do so easily as well. In general,
we want it to be easy to do work with Debian.

> *) Why restrictions made by authors are more "evil" than those made by
> resellers? Double standard.

Oh, I see where you are coming from. If a reseller puts proprietary
software on a CD along with Debian, that is still their software, not
part of Debian. It does not make Debian non-free - you can still give
away Debian without their proprietary software. We want Debian to be a
"base" upon which things can be built without legal problems. Part of this
means that Debian's license should not "contaminate" the software you
bundle it with.

> *) Restricting someone of using our free software to damage the cause of
> free software is like restricting someone to use my freely available
> hammer to break my legs.

To extend a metaphor much too far, we allow them to break their copy of
your legs, but not your own legs, or other people's copies of your legs.

> Speaking of paranoia, I just recalled that many developers are concerned
> about the possibility that some not well-intentioned developer inserts
> a trojan horse in the distribution. Something must be done to prevent this.

Yes, you know we are working on trace-ability and identification of
developers, right?

> But, what if some CD producer intentionally ships an altered version of
> Debian with trojan horses just to give Debian a bad reputation?

My intent is to protect this using the Debian trademark. If you change the
Official CD set from the one we distribute and use the words "Official" and
"Debian" in the product name, you would be in violation of our trademark
and we could take legal action.

You'll notice that the full ISO 9660 images of the CDs are on several
FTP sites, and the MD5 checksums of the individual files are on our
main FTP site. If you have a bad copy, you should be able to tell.

> We would have to advise people not to buy those CDs, but we should be
> able to forbid them to further sell the CDs.

We could forbid people from selling them as "Debian", using our trademark
rights.

> We already had a case (Infomagic) of a CD producer who shipped the wrong
> version by mistake. Should we forgive a second mistake? And a third one?

This is one reason I went to the Official CD. It removes one source of
mistakes, since someone within Debian masters the CD. However, there will
be more mistakes, including ones on our part.

> Well, I think some more reflexion is needed.

Please rest assured that these issues are not new to me, or to many other
Debian developers, and that we have considered them for a long time.

	Many Thanks

	Bruce Perens
-- 
Bruce Perens K6BP   bruce@pixar.com   510-215-3502
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