On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 14:29, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> > Unfortunately this is becoming less true. CSS contains statements for
> > content generation and counting variables. Is this a program? I'm not
> > sure, but it's definitely not just a document anymore. XSLT can be
> > included as "documentation" (and probably is in a lot of places, in or
> > outside of Debian), and XSLT is Turing-complete. Where does the line get
> > drawn? Is it possible to draw one?
>
> It's possible to draw a line. The GNU FDL clearly describes what a
> "Transparant copy" is for example.
Whether or not it describes what a transparent copy is is irrelevant. In
fact, XML and HTML (and I would imagine therefore CSS and XSLT) are
explicitly listed as transparent formats. I'm not going to argue that.
The problems, although they're transparent, they're programs as well as
documents. I'm sure there's typesetting systems (I only have a passing
familiarity with LaTeX) that are Turing-complete too. What is a
document, and what is a program? How can Debian even begin to
distinguish what makes free documentation different from free software
when we can't distinguish whether a particular piece of data is software
or documentation in the first place?
...
> The FDL is not DFSG-compliant, but that doesn't make it non-free.
I agree. I'm sure someone could show me a non DFSG compliant license I
consider free. But that wasn't what I said. I said I consider a document
with invariant sections non-free, which is my own personal judgement,
and not the FSF's or DFSG's. It just happens that, right now, the DFSG
agrees with my point of view.
--
- Joe Wreschnig <piman@sacredchao.net> - http://www.sacredchao.net
"What I did was justified because I had a policy of my own... It's
okay to be different, to not conform to society."
-- Chen Kenichi, Iron Chef Chinese
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