On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 01:45:56PM -0600, Joel Baker wrote: > > 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? If you feel somehow honor-bound to not publish FSF documentation because the FSF rejects our definition of software, that's your business. Don't be too surprised if other maintainers laugh at you when you tell them you want them to stop including these documents in their packages for this reason. We ARE, however, bound to honor our own definitions -- in particular, our definition of what Debian itself is: Free Software. If that means we have to use a slightly different definition of what software is, well, so be it. But it seems that some people are trying to get around the DFSG by claiming software guidelines shouldn't apply to certain types of content, which doesn't work, because the only kind of content it's in our charter to publish is software. <shrug> Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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