Joey, On Tue, Nov 12, 2002 at 04:00:42PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: > Simon Richter wrote: > > iWhy does the mountain have to go to the prophet? I think it is time for > > some Debian Free Documentation Guidelines, which actually know about the > > special requirements for documentation > I think it's interesting that even in the context of a thread on > removing our mostly useless non-free section It's useless for software, not for documentation. We have no other place for standards documents that may not be distributed in modified form. Basically, there are three options: 1. Keep non-free around, but remove all non-documentation packages 2. Grant exceptions for situations where it makes no sense to be strict 3. Remove the documentation packages (1) changes the whole meaning of this thread. It makes some sort of sense (non-free won't need to be autobuilt, and there would be no compromise of ideals needed), yet it would need a different (and competing to the current one) GR. (2) is the option that lets us remove non-free without dropping the packages. It means carefully formulating how the exceptions should look like, but it ought to work. (3) would be the worst option, as it is a decision against our users for some benefit that's totally unclear to me. I mean, what is the point in distributing modified standards documents? "Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for (Loretta's) right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry." Another problem is that this doesn't apply just to standards documents. While reading through the old debian-legal posts concerning the issue (Nov/Dec 2001), I've stumbled across several examples that were discussed then, but where a solution was never reached. For example, the gdb manual is supposedly under the FDL, but I couldn't find any text stating this in the manual (so its legal status is unclear). The last thing I've seen about this manual was in said discussion that it contained invariant sections, where it is not clear whether that meets the DFSG. You see, it makes some sort of sense to have a set of guidelines defining what is free documentation and what isn't. While RFCs may not be modified, they can be extended and superseded by other RFCs. While this isn't patching in the technical sense (which the DFSG permits in case the author insists on pristine source), it is a similar concept and should be honoured as such. What else is there to stop them from going into main? The formatting, which is probably not the author's preferred form of source code? Documentation is different from program code, so I believe we should also treat it differently. This doesn't mean looser. Simon -- GPG Fingerprint: 040E B5F7 84F1 4FBC CEAD ADC6 18A0 CC8D 5706 A4B4
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