Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages
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"EG" == Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.org> writes:
EGE> I agree that the PS or PDF should count as source if the
EGE> original source has been lost, but upstream not having the
EGE> original source isn't quite strong enough. I would guess
EGE> that in many cases the upstream author of the software
EGE> doens't have the document source, but someone else does.
It's entirely likely that the author has (La)TeX source for the
paper, but doesn't want to make it available for the reasons you
cite below:
EGE> I would also guess that in most cases the availability of
EGE> source is irrelevant, because the academic paper isn't
EGE> available under a DFSG-free licence anyway; most authors
EGE> of academic papers don't want other people distributing
EGE> modified versions of them. This isn't a serious
EGE> restriction, because no one would want to do that anyway,
EGE> but it means that academic papers are generally not
EGE> DFSG-free.
Exactly. So the question is, does the DFSG really apply to
documentation or not? I'd say not -- right now we don't have any
policy that clearly applies to documentation, and we probably
should. I would also tend to lean towards having looser
requirements on documentation (especially on academic reprints)
than on software.
Having free documentation, complete with source, is great, and
definitely something that we should encourage whenever possible.
But I think that if we start demanding source under the threat of
banishing their docs to non-free from authors who are willing to
make their docs available in a less than perfect form to our
users, we're heading for trouble.
CMC
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Man cannot be civilised, or be kept civilised by what he does in his
spare time; only by what he does as his work.
W.R. Lethaby
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C.M. Connelly cmc@debian.org SHC, DS
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