Re: All GPL'ed programs have to go to non-free
On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 02:22:11PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
>
> > I'd also say that for a user, access to documentation is an unavoidable
> > requirement for using the software (e.g. for most non-trivial uses it
> > will be a pain to work with a gcc without any documentation of the
> > available options - and even Debian developers will have to use the
> > GFDL'ed documentation as part of their Debian work).
>
> The fact that we can remove the documentation and still distribute the
> software demonstrates that it isn't an unavoidable requirement.
The question remains whether a gcc or MySQL without documentation is of
any practical value.
In theory, your users are of equal priority for you as free software.
In theory, you don't want to make the system depend on an item of
non-free software
In practice, you are making parts of Debian unusable without the
documentation in non-free (which is according to your definition
software) forcing users of Debian to use non-free.
Until recently, non-free contained only some obscure things most people
didn't require. It's funny that moving much documentation to non-free
will force many users to add non-free to their sources.list ...
cu
Adrian
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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