On Fri, Sep 14, 2007 at 07:05:08AM +0000, Charles Plessy wrote: > Le Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 08:50:04PM -0500, Peter Samuelson a écrit : > > > > We're pretty much at an impasse, then, so I don't think I'll reply > > after this message. I, and many Debian folks, don't quite understand > > the essential difference, between functional source code and > > non-functional documents[*], that make the DFSG freedoms only important > > for the one and not the other. I mean, if I might want to freely make > > derivative works of software, well, maybe I want to freely make > > derivative works of spec documents too. For many of the same reasons, > > in fact. > > On the other hand, does the effort of removing these documents from the > upstream sources has any chance to make things change in the future, by > either having the IETF freeing the RFCs, or volunteers paraphrasing free > versions of them? I can understand how OpenOffice is more free than > Microsoft Office, but not how a source package with the RFCs deleted is > more free than the original one... It is more free: what is in main should be completely modifiable by a user (or in that case a developper wanting to fork/make something better/...whatever). We commit ourselves to this fact, so each time we find a usual category of non free material shipped in the source packages, we remove them to stick to our values. That's all. > This said, it does not make a big difference, apart from the packager's > time... But would I be asked to expurge one of my package, I would > probably consider moving it in non-free instead. This is the most stupid thing ever. I often have RFC's or non-free doc's in the repositories of my projects because it's handy. The fact that as an upstream I'm too lazy to remove a few RFC docs that aren't use by the software should not have as a consequence that my software goes in non-free. With your argument, gcc would be in non-free right now... -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O madcoder@debian.org OOO http://www.madism.org
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