[IAEP] squeak/etoys accepted into Debian main

[Jonas Smedegaard]

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On Fri, Nov 07, 2008 at 07:21:10PM -0800, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
>At Sat, 8 Nov 2008 00:09:34 -0300 ,
>Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
>> 
>> My point was: is forbidding the export clause as part of the Open 
>> Source definition a practical concern or is it just a philosophical 
>> checkbox?

Sorry - I even missed answering that most important question before :-P

In theory the checkbox is "only" philosophical - because Debian has no 
"customers" so we are driven purely by the principles of our 
organisation.

In reality, however, Debian is used worldwide, including countries 
cosidered "enemies" to the U.S., which I believe is only possible due to 
the ability to ship it all together without concern for non-matching 
licenses.


>  (In regards to whether it is just a philosophical checkbox, I tend to 
>think so.  If a company makes a product based on an open-source project 
>and sells it to Cuba from the US, the company may be punished 
>regardless what its license says.)

The Cuban government would not hardly buy an american commercial 
distillation of a FLOSS software product. Rather they would buy know-how 
on creating their own derivative distribution based directly on Debian, 
which is completely legal.

Same with Iran, Iraq, and similar countries that are sometimes allies, 
sometimes enemies of the U.S.


>> I just want efforts like these (I contributed very little - just 
>> figured out who a couple of the developers were) to be rewarded by 
>> something actually changing as a result.
>
>  The real change I would like to see is it just gets in these distros 
>without much hoopla and emailing man-hours...

If you want the (on the surface) simple solution, then use Ubuntu!

They skim the cream of Debian, and is not bound by our DFSG or even by 
our "Social Contract", so can "cheat" and add userfriendly "toppings" 
like patented multimedia CODECs, closed-source drivers for popular 
graphics and WiFi cards, and so on. Still promoting themselves as fully 
FLOSS, of course.

And they have time-based releases, so instead of "release when ready" as 
Debian does, they release when... time's up.

;-)


  - Jonas

- -- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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