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Re: The GNU FDL is a free license! (Was: Re: O: gnu-standards --GNU coding standards)



Il lun, 2002-04-08 alle 00:15, Joe Wreschnig ha scritto:
> 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?

TeX is turing complete. apart from that, i'd say that

	a program is mainly intended to be run on a computer
	documentation is mainly intended to be run on a brain

even with such strange documents as literate programs (cfr. the WEB
system), the program and the documentation are easily distinguishable
(and they are in the *same* document!)
 
-- 
Federico Di Gregorio
Debian GNU/Linux Developer & Italian Press Contact        fog@debian.org
INIT.D Developer                                           fog@initd.org
                              Viviamo in un mondo reale, Ciccio. -- Lucy

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