Re: next approach: new non-free/contrib policy

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Clint Adams wrote:

> > They most certainly are when they invalidate a copyright. The current
> > export restrictions on encryption make it impossible to assign a "Free"
> > copyright/license to those pieces of software that fall under the export
> > restrictions.
> 
> NOW I see your point.  But governments (which you might say are legal
> fiction just like copyrights, licenses, patents, and export
> restrictions) are third parties imposing additional silly rules
> upon the author's original silly rules. 

Absolutely!!! But, unlike the author, governments have some
"non-fictitious" powers that force us to pay attention to its childish
whims.
 
>                                         It seems to me that "punishing"
> software packages by labelling them non-DFSG-compliant is unproductive.

I don't think that we should consider non-DFSG-compliant as a punishable
offense. Such software simply needs to be dealt with in a different
fashion than the DFSG compliant program does. We aren't trying to figure
out how to punish those authors. This is a search for methods that allow
us to use their software while protecting the end user from inadvertant
mis-use. The whole point of free software is, after all, to release the
end user from the legal restrictions of use that non-free software imposes.

Placing packages into non-us and saying that that is also non-free
protects me from inadvertantly shipping a CD with contraband software
accross a "secure" border. To wish to say that the software is still free
is only ignoring the reality of the imposed distribution restrictions.

> There is a movement here to liberate software from oppressive legal fiction
> by putting it under a different form of legal fiction that is "free" in
> the Debian ideology, which not all of us interpret in the same way.
>
True, but when it doesn't work, it doesn't work, no matter how much we
might wish that it could.
 
> Perhaps SPI should start lobbying Congress to get a clue so we can
> lessen the "real" restrictions on distribution as well as the fictional ones.
> Perhaps not.  But, unless we're trying to incite a popular revolution,
> I think that Debian should not work to make oppressive localized
> legislation any more meaningful than it is.
> 
It is my position that this is not the "defense/security" issue that the
law implies. Munitions have always been the lucrative side of the US
military/industrial complex. There are those who wish to keep these
valuable assets under their own control. Only certain companies can obtain
waivers/licenses for the distribution of these "items". Even though these
archaic laws were recently re-organized, the net effect on business has
not changed substantially (outside those who were already enjoying the
fruits of these restrictions).

I'm not at all clear on how to effect change in these areas, but I'm
pretty sure that simply ignoring them by declaring the effected software
to still be free only opens the potential for difficulties for the end
user. This clearly isn't what we intend.

Luck,

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

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