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Re: documentation eq software ?



Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> a tapoté :

> >> Some people wish to include this in their documentation, and some
> >> people wish to include political statements in their
> >> software. The GFDL protects the first of these - the GPL does not
> >> protect the second. Why do you believe that they are different?
> >
> >If the GFDL invariant section was used to include political statement
> >that have nothing to do with computers (like racist statement, as
> >proposed before), I would find normal to trash these documentation
> >that use the GFDL invariant section for a purpose out of the scope of
> >Debian.
> 
> So you classify some forms of political statement as more worthwhile?
> Which political statements should Debian accept? Which should it reject?

Debian already accept political statements. Please, a "social contract"
cannot be apolitical!
When you propose rules for a society, a social entity, via a social
contract, you're are indeed trying to rule your *polis*.

> >But a political stand about computers within a documentation
> >describing the software does not seems a problem to me: it
> >documents the software! It's the purpose of the
> >documentation. While at the contrary, including the manifesto
> >within emacs, for instance, does not require a protection (it's not
> >a part of the software and can be safely removed, if present).
> 
> No, a political statement does not document the software. It tells us
> something about the author's motivations.

Which can be considered as an information about the software.

> Making a political statement within the software does exactly the
> same. Why do you believe that one should be protected and the other
> shouldn't?

Because a software is not a documentation. 
Your Emacs manual purpose is to document Emacs. Emacs purpose is
whatever you can do with it by using it. 

If you're not interested in any secondary section of a manual, you can
skip them at no cost. 

Side note: I never said that 'political statement within the
documentation should be protected' but I said that I understand and
think acceptable and harmless why some people want to protect some
political statement in a documentation. This is pretty different. 



-- 
Mathieu Roy
 
  Homepage:
    http://yeupou.coleumes.org
  Not a native english speaker: 
    http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english



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