Re: O: gnu-standards -- GNU coding standards
On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 08:45:03AM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 12:12:41AM -0500, Jeff Licquia wrote:
> > On Mon, 2002-04-08 at 20:53, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > Why should the DFSG have to worry about such philosophical questions?
> > > Why isn't it enough to worry about the license?
>
> > Because software isn't documentation?
>
> > Think of it this way: national security would be so much easier to
> > maintain if we could just define cryptography as a weapon of war,
> > equivalent to a nuclear device, "for the purposes of the import
> > regulations". We all know how well that worked.
>
> > Similarly, it would be a lot easier to just define documentation to be
> > software "for the purposes of the DFSG". But does it make sense?
>
> The alternative is that documentation will be treated as something we
> are enjoined by the Social Contract from distributing at all. Debian
> Will Remain 100% Free Software. This may have been poor phrasing on
> the part of the authors, but there is *not* a clear consensus that this
> is the case; which means that your only remedy is a GR to modify/clarify
> the Social Contract and/or the DFSG, and until that happens, no amount
> of debate here will prevent packages from being bounced out of main if
> their documentation licenses do not meet the DFSG.
You know, I keep hearing this. Does this mean we should ditch the entirety
of GCC's manuals, even old ones which weren't under the FDL, since the FSF
has *clearly* indicated that *they* do not consider them to by software,
since they created a *separate license* solely for documentation - which
means that for their intent, documentation != software, and thus, Debian
should respect that and not publish it, since it's not software at all?
--
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Joel Baker System Administrator - lightbearer.com
lucifer@lightbearer.com http://users.lightbearer.com/lucifer/
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