Re: The debate on Invariant sections (long)
Jérôme Marant <jmarant@nerim.net> wrote:
> >He believes his invariant sections are an important soapbox for his free
> >software philosophies. In an apparent contradiction, he feels it's a
> >small price to pay if that makes the documentation non-free.
>
> Could we consider some invariant sections as "non-problematic"?
Well, they interfere greatly with derived works of documents (you can't
merge in text into a derived work without also including the Invariants)
whether the derived works are other manuals, a reference card, or
context-sensitive help in Emacs (a pull-down menu for example).
How you you create such a pull-down menu?
I'd even argue that distributing Emacs that links into the Info document
as it does now is not permitted by the Emacs license. It seeems to be a
combined work with added restrictions beyond what the GPL allows.
> >> But then, if we're seeking for enemies, I believe they
> >> are not on GNU side ...
> >
> >I think we should be true to ourselves, in spite of whatever the FSF
> >say. I think it's unfortunate that not only are they using a non-free
> >license, but that they are promoting it as a free license.
>
> You are right if you considered such documentation as covered
> by DFSG. This is the point of the debate.
I think it's shortsighted to put documentation onto a pedestal out of
the reach of software. What happens if I want to merge this
documentation into software?
Peter
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