Re: suggestion: DFDG - Debian Free Documentation Guidelines [was: Discussion - non-free software removal]
On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 08:49:31AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> Wrong. If you have the right to modify a piece of software for your own
> purposes, why should you not have the right to modify its documentation to
> state what you have done?
Your assuming that the documentation is software documentation. In which
case, I tend to agree. If I add a new option to program X, then I should
also add that to the documentation too. Or if I find an error in the
documentation, I should be able to fix it.
I think standards are different though; you can't just alter the
standard; either the software complies with the standard or it doesn't.
You can't change the standard to reflect the new condition of the
software (or not without agreement from the people who wrote the
standard at least).
Even if I find an error or ambiguous point in the standard, it is too
late for me to fix it; there might be over implementations around who
have interpreted it differently to how I interpreted it (as in my
previous example for ECN). Instead, this is something that may need to
be addressed by the authors of the standard.
There might be other documentation in a similar situation too,
but standards I think are the most obvious category that should
be in Debian.
--
Brian May <bam@debian.org>
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