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Re: Please remove RFCs from the documentation in Debian packages



On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 02:19:59PM -0700, Brian Nelson wrote:
> Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> writes:
> 
> > On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 06:23:14PM +0200, Marcelo E. Magallon 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".
> >
> > Well, of *course* we do. It would be idiotic and hypocritical to
> > interpret it as "The software in Debian will be free, but the
> > documentation doesn't have to be".
> >
> > We have historically allowed some free non-software things into the
> > archive, since it doesn't matter very much. Why does anybody think
> > that allowing non-free non-software things into the archive is
> > acceptable?
> 
> It all depends on how you define "free".  I think that documentation, as
> long as it's freely distributable and usable, is free enough.  I don't
> see any need to require documentation to be freely modifiable.

You have some free software, and it comes with a manual. You modify
the software in a manner which suits you... but you're not allowed to
modify the manual to reflect this change; the license of the manual
requires that it only document the unmodified version, so any modified
versions are at an immediate disadvantage.

And you think this is acceptable? Why?

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing,
 `. `'                          | Imperial College,
   `-             -><-          | London, UK

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