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Re: Please remove RFCs from the documentation in Debian packages



On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 10:51:15AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:

 > That would be clause #1 of the Debian Social Contract.

 Where do you draw the line between software, data and documentation?  I
 get the impression that you are reading "Debian Will Remain 100% Free
 Software" to mean "everything in Debian will be Free Software" instead
 of "all the software in Debian will be Free Software".  There's a good
 deal of packages in Debian that can't be classified as "software" no
 matter how you twist the definition.  WordNet provides a lax
 definition:

    From WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]:

      software
           n : (computer science) written programs or procedures or
               rules and associated documentation pertaining to the
               operation of a computer system and that are stored in
               read/write memory [...]

 foldoc has this comment on the subject:

     Some claim that {documentation} (both paper and electronic) is
     also software.  Others go further and define software to be
     programs plus documentation though this does not correspond
     with common usage.

 To be fair, I'm not going to mention "anarchism".  But what do you do
 with all the LG packages?  And several kinds of "theme" packages?  And
 the fortune packages?  And the dictionaries?  Think about your answer,
 we can't package random data just because it can be consumed by some
 program in the distribution.

 Marcelo



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