Re: Please remove RFCs from the documentation in Debian packages
* Steve Langasek (vorlon@netexpress.net) wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 01:42:01PM -0500, Joshua Haberman wrote:
> > * Branden Robinson (branden@debian.org) wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 03:38:18PM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> > > > On Jul 03, Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com> wrote:
> > > > I fully agree. Banning RFCs from debian is just silly.
>
> > > So, what other non-DFSG-free stuff is it "silly" to ban? Netscape
> > > Navigator? Adobe Acrobat Reader?
>
> > Keep in mind that this hard-line stance of applying the DFSG to
> > everything in the archive will probably make it more difficult to gain
> > support for the non-free removal resolution.
>
> I think our commitment to providing a distribution consisting
> exclusively of material whose license complies with the freedoms
> outlined in the DFSG is far more important than the question of whether
> we continue to distribute non-free alongside. If we are going to allow
> documentation into main that follows a different set of rules than the
> ones we use for software, the Social Contract must be amended to
> unambiguously reflect this point of view. Otherwise, how are
> redistributors and users supposed to know where the line is between
> stuff-that's-really-free and stuff-that's-not-free-but-included-anyway?
If the separation between main and non-free is intended primarily as a
guarantee that everything in main is DFSG-free, and that no part of the
core distribution depends on non-free software, I completely agree with
you. To the supporters of non-free removal, I get the impression that is
more of a delineation between what the project morally endorses and what
it only grudgingly supports as a service to users.
If you assume the former view, there is no reason to remove non-free as a
whole, because the main/non-free split already guarantees that Debian
proper is 100% DFSG-free. If you assume the latter view, there is no
reason to shun the non-modifiability of RFCs, because they are free
enough for their purpose, just as license texts are.
--
Josh Haberman
Debian GNU/Linux developer
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