Re: Debian Free Documentation Guidelines was: License of old GNU Emacs manual
Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 04 Jan 2005, John H. Robinson, IV wrote:
>> If in main, what distinguishes the bits in a document (README.TXT) from
>> the program (hello_world)? If in doc/main, would there be a single
>
> Since this is an old point, and we already it clear that there are two camps
> in the project, and we need to cater for the two camps, why bother?
There is no necessity to attempt to make everyone happy. We do not need
to cater for the two camps, especially as doing so will *not* make
everyone happy. People who believe that documents should meet the same
freedoms as programs will be unhappy about any documents in main that
don't - people who believe that documents don't need to meet the same
freedoms will be unhappy that any are removed.
Either we treat documents in the same way as programs, or we don't. If
we don't, we need to justify *why* a different set of freedoms is
required. That justification needs to be strong enough to convince a 3:1
majority of developers, since it'll require changing the social
contract.
So far, I have not seen a single convincing argument as to why
documentation needs different freedoms to executable code. The existence
of this thread is a good opportunity to try to find some.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.project@srcf.ucam.org
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