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Re: Debian Weekly News - August 19th, 2003



On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, John Goerzen wrote:
> The corrolary is that 0% of Debian is non-free software.
> Documentation is not software at all.

Ah. So we're 97% Free Software, 3% Documentation, and 0% Non-Free
Software.[1]

Thanks for clearing that up.

> If you take Clause 1 of the Social Contract to literally mean that
> Debian contains nothing save software that is free, then that clause
> has never been true since it was introduced, since we have always
> contained many non-software items (documentation, bibles, Linux
> Gazette issues, RFCs, graphics, wallpapers, sounds, etc.)

But typically those files have had the same freedoms that software has
in Debian. In cases where they don't, RC bugs have been filed and
stinks raised. [IE, for RFC's, and GFDL'ed documentation.]

Regardless, if Debian wants to include documentation that is not free
under the DFSG, it pretty much has to do so via GR. 

Why don't you draft and propose a GR on -project that modifies the
Social Contract and provides a DFDG or similar to remove this
ambiguity?

Until that point, I don't really see -legal and/or ftpmaster doing
much else than conservatively interpreting and acting upon the Social
Contract and the DFSG.


Don Armstrong
1: Obviously arbitrary percentages
-- 
"People selling drug paraphernalia ... are as much a part of drug
trafficking as silencers are a part of criminal homicide."
 -- John Brown, DEA Chief

http://www.donarmstrong.com
http://www.anylevel.com
http://rzlab.ucr.edu

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