Here's another thought, and it's essentially costless: lobby upstream developers whose software is non-free to relicense DFSG compliant. The worst they can say is no.
Well, of course that's been happening for years. The fact that non-free is a little farther away will only make it easier.
If you want to make a contribution, I'd counsel you to work on what excites you the most. If it puts you to sleep, you might be able to do without it and leave it to others.
I have some simple rules for licensing that you can use if you don't want to get in too deep. First, make sure that the copyright holders (that's you and anyone else who contribute) own what they are contributing. They can't have cut and pasted from elsewhere, they have to have written the code.
Then, use the GPL for stuff you do on your free time, and use the BSD license for stuff that someone else pays you for if they don't like the GPL.
The GPL is sharing with rules, the BSD license is a gift with almost no requirements upon the folks who get the code. It makes sense that if you do the work on your own time, people who modify the work should give you the same rights on their changes that you gave them on the original code - and the GPL requires that. But if you get paid to do the code, BSD is fine - because it's not a gift as far as you are concerned.
IE does not comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and thus would not be in Contrib. Contrib software is DFSG-compliant and depends on some non-DFSG-compliant piece.
The idea is that you could replace the non-free component, for example by providing a good free Java VM rather than the VM that some things depend upon, and then that software in Contrib could move into main.
The DFSG says things about the software being available in source and free to use, modify, and redistribute. That's hardly IE. We generally mean Freedom, not Price, when we say "Free".
If you want the US to be less plutocratic, I think you need some changes in the media. People vote according to what they are presented with in the news, and the news here is produced for ratings, rather than as a means of cultivating an educated voter. The Internet was supposed to fix that simply by providing more variety in news programming, but it has not, so far, done so.
My current idea would be to require of broadcasters, in exchange for their access to spectrum, that they have much higher standards regarding integrity of news programming, that they not apply ratings to news at all, that they present it when people would see it, and that they broadcast as much news as they do advertising in any 24-hour period. To say that the broadcasters would not like this is an understatement. But they are using a precious spectrum resource for which they presently pay nothing. This would address the "if it bleeds it leads" problem that keep so many of the U.S. people in a state of permanent terror, among other things. And as long as you don't regulate content, you don't get into first ammendment problems.
I've got to agree. The Social Contract I wrote was the best one we could put forward years ago, with far fewer Debian developers. It encompassed some self-contradiction regarding non-free that we don't need any longer.
To make your jest serious: This is the trail that Richard Stallman proceeded down in about 1984. He wanted good software, and felt that the complications of copyright (and the business model that usually came along with copyright) made good software so much more difficult to produce.
Some time before non-free disappears from Debian's mirrors, we'd make some base package require a package containing an installation script that looks to see if the user is presently using the non-free repository. So, everyone who runs an upgrade would get this package, and it's script would run. If the user is using the non-free repository, the user gets a note that it's moving, and is asked if he'd like to reset his apt choices to the new location of non-free or to do without non-free from then on, in which case we'd present the list of packages that would be lost from the system.
Debian isn't about taking choice s away from people. But that doesn't mean that Debian can't make it's own choices and ask people to find what they want elsewhere.
It's not just politics. Or, I guess I should say that these politics have an engineering reason behind them. It's really hard to produce a great distribution with the latest software that is available when you don't have the right to freely use, modify, and redistribute that software. Other considerations than engineering ones would tend to dominate your choices of what goes in the software.
I'm the guy who put these policies in writing for Debian. I had the job of building the distribution, and these policies were the ones that would allow us to build it as best we could. If you were to take the time to do the job for a while, you'd probably come to the same conclusions.
Perhaps it's easier to think about when considering the patents and standards situation. We could make excellent standards incorporating all sorts of patents with all sorts of royalties. From an abstract engineering standpoint they'd be the best possible, but from an engineering practicality standpoint they'd be useless.Bruce
I agree. The Debian group would probably use this policy change to remove portions of the section that says
Programs That Don't Meet Our Free-Software Standards
We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of programs that don't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We have created "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our FTP archive for this software. The software in these directories is not part of the Debian system, although it has been configured for use with Debian. We encourage CD manufacturers to read the licenses of software packages in these directories and determine if they can distribute that software on their CDs. Thus, although non-free software isn't a part of Debian, we support its use, and we provide infrastructure (such as our bug-tracking system and mailing lists) for non-free software packages.
I don't see them using this power to loosen up on their standards for either software or documentation.
Debian is huge. It's long past the point that non-free could support its own organization.
When I created the original Debian Social Contract, non-free wouldn't have been self-supporting. But we've had this hypocracy about non-free since then. Non-free is not officially part of Debian, but is maintained as part of Debian, using all of the same facilities and within the same organization. Debian can now afford to be 100% Free Software and no exceptions, and can put non-free somewhere else with people who care about it. APT will handle this very easily, there's no overhead to the user except perhaps to change/etc/apt/sources.list once, which we can do for them with a script.
I think the Berkeley version was a derived work of the BBN one. It's been a long time. Berkeley's main feat was adding VM to Unix.
Gee, remember when fsck came along? It was a lot easier than icheck, dcheck, ncheck, and your last resort: adb. Sysadmins really had to know their stuff before fsck.
Changed your mind? Well, I'm glad you are now better informed:-) . I would not have let this series have my name on it if these books were not compliant with the Open Source Definition / Debian Free Software Guidelines.
It seems I had a miscommunication
with the freelancers doing the production. This book grew from an estimated
400 pages to well over 700. In an attempt to conserve space, we opted to
take out the physical pages dividing the book into Parts. I thought it was
understood that we would still have Parts indicated in the TOC and at the
start of appropriate chapters, but they were mistakenly taken out
altogether. I'm going to work to get the parts re-added to the
electronic version anyway, and to the reprint when the time comes.
The license actually allows you to scan the book, or use the electronic version, and print commercial copies. The only production would be printing. So, we prefer to have all initial orders to bookstores shipped and distributed before someone has a chance to do that.
I don't think they'll get to the GPL issue. It will be like the old ATT case, where the court determined that the plaintiff did not have a valid copyright interest in the code in question, and the case ended there.
Right. Don't worry, I'm not offended. Whoever read the google post will get a giggle out of it.
I'm just trying to be nice to people who I do know, and who generally get very little help from me (the $1000 or so I make from a book wouldn't even pay my consulting rate to write a foreword, so I am mostly off doing other things to pay the bills or working on Open Source).
I'm not the copy editor. The way the series works is that I do some acquisition and the overall direction of the series. There is an executive editor at Prentice Hall PTR, Mark Taub, who is in charge of the series and assigns editors to books. Then, there is an editor for the book, in this case Jill Harry, who helps the author publish. But note that technical books are such a marginal business - with 5000 copies being considered "good" sales, that these days publishers pretty much let the author write their book.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, of course that's been happening for years. The fact that non-free is a little farther away will only make it easier.
Bruce
Bruce
IMO this mission lies with the Debian derivative rather than with Debian. Like Libranet and Knoppix, for example.
Bruce
Bruce
I have some simple rules for licensing that you can use if you don't want to get in too deep. First, make sure that the copyright holders (that's you and anyone else who contribute) own what they are contributing. They can't have cut and pasted from elsewhere, they have to have written the code.
Then, use the GPL for stuff you do on your free time, and use the BSD license for stuff that someone else pays you for if they don't like the GPL.
The GPL is sharing with rules, the BSD license is a gift with almost no requirements upon the folks who get the code. It makes sense that if you do the work on your own time, people who modify the work should give you the same rights on their changes that you gave them on the original code - and the GPL requires that. But if you get paid to do the code, BSD is fine - because it's not a gift as far as you are concerned.
Thanks
Bruce
The idea is that you could replace the non-free component, for example by providing a good free Java VM rather than the VM that some things depend upon, and then that software in Contrib could move into main.
The DFSG says things about the software being available in source and free to use, modify, and redistribute. That's hardly IE. We generally mean Freedom, not Price, when we say "Free".
Bruce
If you want the US to be less plutocratic, I think you need some changes in the media. People vote according to what they are presented with in the news, and the news here is produced for ratings, rather than as a means of cultivating an educated voter. The Internet was supposed to fix that simply by providing more variety in news programming, but it has not, so far, done so.
My current idea would be to require of broadcasters, in exchange for their access to spectrum, that they have much higher standards regarding integrity of news programming, that they not apply ratings to news at all, that they present it when people would see it, and that they broadcast as much news as they do advertising in any 24-hour period. To say that the broadcasters would not like this is an understatement. But they are using a precious spectrum resource for which they presently pay nothing. This would address the "if it bleeds it leads" problem that keep so many of the U.S. people in a state of permanent terror, among other things. And as long as you don't regulate content, you don't get into first ammendment problems.
Bruce
Bruce
Did you garble? The Contrib portion is Free Software that depends upon some piece of non-free software.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Some time before non-free disappears from Debian's mirrors, we'd make some base package require a package containing an installation script that looks to see if the user is presently using the non-free repository. So, everyone who runs an upgrade would get this package, and it's script would run. If the user is using the non-free repository, the user gets a note that it's moving, and is asked if he'd like to reset his apt choices to the new location of non-free or to do without non-free from then on, in which case we'd present the list of packages that would be lost from the system.
Debian isn't about taking choice s away from people. But that doesn't mean that Debian can't make it's own choices and ask people to find what they want elsewhere.
Bruce
I'm the guy who put these policies in writing for Debian. I had the job of building the distribution, and these policies were the ones that would allow us to build it as best we could. If you were to take the time to do the job for a while, you'd probably come to the same conclusions.
Perhaps it's easier to think about when considering the patents and standards situation. We could make excellent standards incorporating all sorts of patents with all sorts of royalties. From an abstract engineering standpoint they'd be the best possible, but from an engineering practicality standpoint they'd be useless.Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
When I created the original Debian Social Contract, non-free wouldn't have been self-supporting. But we've had this hypocracy about non-free since then. Non-free is not officially part of Debian, but is maintained as part of Debian, using all of the same facilities and within the same organization. Debian can now afford to be 100% Free Software and no exceptions, and can put non-free somewhere else with people who care about it. APT will handle this very easily, there's no overhead to the user except perhaps to change /etc/apt/sources.list once, which we can do for them with a script.
Bruce
Gee, remember when fsck came along? It was a lot easier than icheck, dcheck, ncheck, and your last resort: adb. Sysadmins really had to know their stuff before fsck.
Bruce
Bruce
But I'm afraid they'll make up with Microsoft and not us.
Much as they have exhibited a multiple-personality disorder where we are concerned, I'll not forget the good they've done us.
Bruce
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
I'm just trying to be nice to people who I do know, and who generally get very little help from me (the $1000 or so I make from a book wouldn't even pay my consulting rate to write a foreword, so I am mostly off doing other things to pay the bills or working on Open Source).
Bruce
Bruce