On Thu, 2003-07-03 at 14:53, Cameron Patrick wrote: > On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 02:34:56PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > | The Debian Social Contract says "Debian Will Remain 100% Free Software". > | If there are things "in Debian" that are "not free" or "not software", > | then we may be violation of our guiding principles. > > The anarchism package is an excellent example of a package in Debian > main that, although DFSG-free, is neither software nor software > documentation. How do you show it's not software? How does it differ from software? What if I take the view that Mozilla is an interpreter and anarchism is the program? Please explain how that differs from the Perl interpreter and Perl programs. What if I put a '#!/usr/bin/lynx' line at the top of an HTML file and 'chmod 755' it? Is it a program then? Most of us who have considered these issues have reached the conclusion that any stream of bits is indistinguishable from "software". It is impossible for Debian to distribute non-software, not (just) because of the Social Contract, but simply because Debian doesn't distribute anything that's not a stream of bits. -- Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>
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