[directory-discuss] s/w that requires a middleman to liberate it -- is it free?

[Anonymous]

Ineiev said:

> > It's a disservice to users to create a mechanism that merely
> > enables a non-free artifact to masquerade as a "free" one by
> > riding on the weasel-wording that Ian Kelling and yourself propose
> > as a workaround to free software.
> 
> Please note that this is not just Svetlana's and Ian's position,
> it's shared by all people on this list who have spoken so far
> except you,

Please note that this is a bandwagon fallacy (e.g. "one million
smokers can't be wrong..").

Moreover it's also particularly laughable when the bandwagon for team
pro-Corporate-America has only has 4 people on it.  The
underrepresentation of team GNU-User-Freedom in this hole-in-the-wall
list does not add merit to the perverse claim that a dictionary advice
guide supercedes the documentation licensing text.

> and it's also the position of the GNU project, which has already
> been pointed out:
> "The criterion for free software is not about who has “access” to the
> program; the four essential freedoms concern what a user that has a
> copy of the program is allowed to do with it."
> [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.en#Access]
> (note "user that has a copy").

You're recycling an argument that has already been made.  And it was
already defeated here:

  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/directory-discuss/2017-01/msg00070.html

If you want to continue this claim with any success, you need to
counter the (so far uncountered) points that defeated the argument
you're recycling, or you need to make a new argument. And preferrably
in that thread.

The licensing text is *legally binding*.  The "Words to Avoid" guide
is nothing more than advice.

Your claim that "the position of the GNU project" does not favor GNU
user freedom in this case doesn't only fail legally, it fails also as
a philosophy in light of the full treatise on the topic.  The SaaSS
article was a work devoted to entirely treating the scenario of access
denial.  BTW, this was also already mentioned in the above-cited post.

> We do distinguish the freedom in use the package and conditions that
> may apply to any particular channel of its distribution; you seem to
> mix them. perhaps you could try to explain us why.

When the "conditions that may apply to any particular channel of its
distribution" violate the licensing text (and the freedoms that that
license protects), it is not a "mixing" of concepts that's at issue.
In fact to claim that conditions imposed by distribution mechanisms
are somehow separate and therefore exempt from licensing constraints
is itself a means to confuse.

>From there, your question is vague.  Can you explain why you think
distribution practices are exempt from the licensing text stating that
the documentation artificts be included with the software artifacts?

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