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Author: Adam Borowski
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [Dng] Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?
On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 02:07:41PM +0200, Didier Kryn wrote:
>
> Le 30/03/2015 13:53, John Morris a écrit :
> > Both
> >the FSF and Debian claim to be the most 'Free.'
>
>     This is not my understanding. Debian does not claim to be more free
> than
> GNU. They just admit the reality that some non-free softwares are usefull
> enough that they deserve to be put in their "non-free" repo.


It's not only FSF accusing Debian of non-freeness (making the non-free repo
available), but also the other way: at least two licenses that came from FSF
are non-free. And Debian tries hard to look the other way and let bad stuff
in: the AGPL is allowed despite failing both FSF Freedom 0[1] and the DFSG
Dissident Test[2]. The GFDL, too, is allowed in principle, despite
forbidding the user to chmod -r or use technology known as a "key" to lock
the door to the server room, and only unmodifiable sections are disallowed
in Debian.

The FSF is unhappy Debian called them out for problems in their licenses.


[1]. You're not allowed to reuse AGPLed code in an IMAP server, a networked
lift control or any other scenario where there's no way for the user to
download the source.

[2]. Have a blogging platform that allows the general public to place their
articles, and dissidents to communicate via steganography hidden in articles
they post. Without the public access, suspicious messages stand out,
putting the dissidents in risk. Yet the AGPL would force you to release the
source, making it obvious for the authorities that there's steganography
hidden there. On the other hand, the GPL requires source release only to
fellow dissidents who run the software.
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