Re: LDP in main?

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 06:27:58PM -0500, David Merrill wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 03:48:41PM -0600, Colin Watson wrote:
> > I haven't followed the discussion in detail, but I understand the
> > problems are with invariant sections used on anything but rather small
> > sections of text (typically the copyright itself, a note about company
> > sponsorship, or things like that). Documents without invariant sections
> > are fine as far as I know.
> 
> I think we have only 1 or 2 that might even be questionable. I know 1
> has a section added when it was archived. It shouldn't be an issue.

We don't currently distribute HOWTOs that have been archived (if by that
you mean the documents in unmaintained/), so that should be OK.

> > My current plan is to have my refresh scripts get the XML database dump
> > first, then use that plus a set of licence rules to decide which
> > documents to download to produce this month's doc-linux tarball. The
> > main problem is likely to be deciding which of the documents with
> > licences flagged as "OTHER" are free and which aren't, which is where
> > debian-legal's decisions about documentation licences are likely to
> > become most important.
> 
> Other usually means non-free, in my experience. Those "licenses" are
> usually just a statement that it is freely distributable, not a formal
> license.

OK. I'll have a look through a selection of them as and when I have time
and see if I find any that are DFSG-free, in which case I can make
case-by-case exceptions for packaging.

> What is the latest we could put off the actual implementation? I want
> a chance to get as many documents as possible relicensed before it
> goes into Woody. Let's try to minimize the impact, heh?

The standard freeze, which includes doc-linux, starts on December 8 and
finishes (as I understand it) a month after that. I want to allow at
least two weeks to get doc-linux-non-free accepted and to make sure
there aren't any major packaging problems, so we need to start the
implementation as soon as possible and upload a nearly-final version
three weeks from now. Tweaks can be made after that if necessary.

Unless there are further objections, the conversations in this thread
suggest I should divide the package as follows:

  doc-linux:          GFDL, GPL, OPL, PD
  doc-linux-non-free: LDPL, NONE, OTHER

It will also be worth investigating the packages of LDP translations. As
far as I can tell, the ones that are parts of tasks and so subject to
the next stage of the freeze are the Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese
translations; I've cc'ed their maintainers so they're aware of the
problem.

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]