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:"Social Contract" [anti-trust]



I do not have a strong opinion about this issue, but I feel the discussion
I saw so far is based on some wrong assumptions.

I would like people to consider the following when they think about this 
issue:

*) Free software != Public domain
   Free distribution (Debian)  ==  Public domain ??? Why?
   (We defend freely distributable _but_ copyrighted software, don't we?)

*) We have to ask ourselves seriously whether we are in fact just working
for free for CD resellers.

*) Are we trying to discourage restrictions made by authors in part
because we want to protect CD resellers? It sounds as if we have a double
standard here. I'm not saying we have, but it sounds that way.

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

*) The GPL (in dpkg) does _not_ take care of this issue. A big part of Debian
is not GPL code.

*) Debian does _not_ produce software. We just pass it along.
But we put work in giving it consistency and a certain layout. It is
reasonable to claim authorship of that work, while licensing it for free.
It is consistent with the free software spirit.

*) Free software != public domain

*) Companies routinely protect their work. That is part of the success
of the FSF and Linux too. The authors protected their work. We should protect
ours. It is _not_ shooting ourselves in the foot, unless we still think of
"free" as meaning "without owner".

*) I agree it might be paranoid. But no more than insisting that authors
must produce "uncontaminated" free software. Maybe we are asking too much
to original authors, or maybe just too little to value-adding ones.

*) 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. Logical self-defense. It is a very tiny restriction.

I agree with Bruce that it might not matter for the existence of free software.
It might matter for the existence of Debian, though. Free software can not
be bought out so easily, but a group of packagers who establish themselves
as the Knights of the Free Software in the Public Interest... :-) is a
fragile entity. Do you think that it is an important one?

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

Well, I think some more reflexion is needed.

Bruce Perens wrote:

> > While respecting the copyright and license terms of each component of the
> > Debian distribution, we claim ownership of the distribution as a whole
> > and reserve the right to restrict its use by any party which damages
> > the Project's image or its goals, as decided by us.
> > In particular, we will not allow Debian-based distributions which contain
> > proprietary enhancements to an important part of Debian.
> 
> I don't like this so far - after everything else we say about freedom
> it would be shooting ourselves in the foot. This topic has been argued
> to death on comp.os.linux.advocacy - my personal take is that it does
> not matter if someone derives a system with lots of non-free stuff as
> long as there continues to be a free system and the possibility of
> competition.


> > While respecting the copyright and license terms of each component of the
> > Debian distribution, we claim ownership of the distribution as a whole
> > and reserve the right to restrict its use by any party which damages
> > the Project's image or its goals, as decided by us.
> > In particular, we will not allow Debian-based distributions which contain
> > proprietary enhancements to an important part of Debian.
> 
> I don't like this so far - after everything else we say about freedom
> it would be shooting ourselves in the foot. This topic has been argued
> to death on comp.os.linux.advocacy - my personal take is that it does
> not matter if someone derives a system with lots of non-free stuff as
> long as there continues to be a free system and the possibility of
> competition.
> 
> How do others feel?
> 
> 	Bruce
> -- 
> Bruce Perens K6BP   bruce@pixar.com   510-215-3502
> Finger bruce@master.debian.org for PGP public key.
> PGP fingerprint = 88 6A 15 D0 65 D4 A3 A6  1F 89 6A 76 95 24 87 B3 
> 
> 
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