Re: jquery debate with upstream
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 10:50:13AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
>> I guess you are referring to the GR that clarified the Social Contract
>> to read "work" instead of "software".
>> https://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003
> That was a conscious decision on the part of the project to revise the
> text of the Social Contract. That vote did *not* replace the use of the
> word "program" in DFSG#2 with the word "software". It is incorrect to
> infer from this vote that Debian decided to require source for all
> non-program works.
That matches my memory of the discussion as well. The purpose was to
require that non-program content in the archive also be covered by a
DFSG-free license concerning such things as modification, redistribution,
and so on, partly because of the GFDL invariant section issues and related
problems (such as RFCs). If there was much discussion of the
applicability of the source requirement to such works, I don't recall it,
and I'm pretty sure it didn't play a role in at least my vote.
That said, when there *is* source of some kind for a non-program work,
often we would want it. I'm not sure I'd be particularly happy about,
say, documentation in the form of PDF files generated from some markup
language but where that source was not available. I'm largely convinced
by the FSF argument that free software should also have free
documentation, since being able to modify the software but not the
documentation is quite annoying and frustrating. (It's a shame the FSF
itself doesn't guarantee that its documentation is free in that fashion,
but that's a different argument.)
I'm less convinced that retaining the original Photoshop file with all the
layers and transparencies alongside any random PNG file is that important.
Particularly since I know graphic designers who routinely discard those
files for small works once they've gotten the final output they want,
since, if they're going to revise a small graphic, they don't use those
files anyway. It also could create the ironic situation of adding files
to the archive that can only be used by non-free software as "source" for
images that can be edited fine in GIMP with fairly minimal loss of
functionality.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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