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Re: Please remove RFCs from the documentation in Debian packages



On Sat, Jul 05, 2003 at 02:10:12PM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> [Stephen Stafford]
> > We have a commitment that everything in Debian main is Free.  Since
> > the RFC license is NOT Free, it can't be in main.  This does NOT
> > imply anything about the usefulness of RFCs, merely about their
> > Freedom.
> 
> There seem to be two ways of interpreting the social contract.  One is
> that the only thing (100%) included in Debian must be free software.
> The other one is that all software included in Debian must be free
> software, as defined by the DFSG.  Only if you use the first
> interpretation do you statement make sense.  I find it rather strange
> to try to handle everything as software, and believe we need to handle
> non-software with a different set of guidelines.  Until these
> guidelines are in place, I believe it is unwise to try to handle
> non-software as software and force the DFSG on all of these.

Even a minimal level of understanding of what free software is, and
what Debian is about, is sufficient to understand that the RFC license
is clearly non-free. The DFSG _is_ just a set of guidelines; playing
lawyer games with the wording will not make non-modifiable things
acceptable.

Any arguments you may care to make in favour of non-modifiable things
will apply equally to software.

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

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