[Fsf-Debian] Who gets to say what the definition of “Debian” is?

[Ben Finney]

Bryan Quigley <gquigs at gmail.com> writes:

> Let's be more precise. There is the Debian distribution and the Debian
> Project.

The thing you're calling “the Debian distribution” is properly called
“Debian”. It's called that consistently in the founding documents of the
Debian project, and Debian project members from that time until this
refer to the operating system by that name.

So to be precise, Debian is properly the operating system defined and
maintained by the Debian project.

Just as GNU is properly the operating system defined and maintained by
the GNU project.

Sometimes the name “Debian” is used colloquially to refer to the Debian
project, and the name “GNU” is used colloquially to refer to the GNU
project. I think we agree that those uses, while they are usually clear
enough, do frequently cause unfortunate confusion such as exhibited in
this thread.

> I agree. The confusion is however enough for the FSF to not consider
> the Debian distribution free.

Yes. Hopefully we all can continue to work on resolving that here in
this forum.

Thank you for caring about this issue enough to discuss the details.

-- 
 \      “What we usually pray to God is not that His will be done, but |
  `\                       that He approve ours.” —Helga Bergold Gross |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney