[Sussex] Distros

[Steve Dobson]

Geoff

On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 06:47:12PM +0100, Geoffrey J. Teale wrote:
> No one is excluded from having a view, but the fact remains that he is
> talking about the spirit and not the legality of the matter.  The
> problem he's discussing is that the GFDL makes it hard for the
> GNU/Emacs manual to be reused in part by the XEmacs project.
> 
> I accept that this is a real problem and I'm really not here to bash
> the Debian project, I just want to make it clear that it is the Debian
> project that predominantly promotes the idea that the GFDL is somehow
> unsuitable for GPL documentation, the fact that many GPL projects are
> documented in GFDL licensed documents is living proof that it can be done.

And many software project are written on close source, proprietary systems.
Does that make them valid too.

Debian (and I suspect Gentoo) as distrobuters of Linux to anyone around
the world worry about local laws more than RedHat or SuSE.  The commercial
distros have market places, and there is no profit in a commercial distro
worrying about the laws in lands where they have no sales.

Debian has developers spread around the world.  Some of those developers
are in countries which do have laws that are a problem to the distorbution
of free software.  If Debian is worrying about these issues it is because
it is an issue, somewhere.

Steve