Re: GFDL in main
Jakub Wilk <jwilk@debian.org> writes:
> * Serafeim Zanikolas <sez@debian.org>, 2012-12-12, 10:30:
>> If I understand correctly, the way to go is to split every problematic
>> source package in two different source packages, one for main (shipping
>> programs) and another for non-free (shipping documentation), with the
>> main package suggesting the non-free one.
> First one should ask upstream if they are willing to relicense the
> documentation. If they are not, then removing the documentation or
> moving it into a non-free package is the only option left.
It's worth noting that the FSF (which is the largest offender in terms of
using these GFDL terms, at least in my experience) recently put in place a
policy allowing maintainers to remove them. It apparently isn't part of
the GNU Coding Standards (I know about it from mail to various GNU
software mailing lists), so I don't have a cite, but I believe the rule is
that invariant sections can be removed provided that the manual is shorter
than some number of pages, where the limit is quite long. The intent was
to allow removal of invariant sections on every manual that was not long
enough that the FSF might want to print it as a book.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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