Re: [rant] Re: Consequences of moving Emacs Manuals to non-free

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> writes:

> On 23 Mar 2006, Hubert Chan told this:
>
>> On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 16:45:50 -0600, Manoj Srivastava
>> <srivasta@debian.org> said:
>>> The info file is a derived file; the source is make.texi. The
>>> preferred form for modification is the texi file, which is non
>>> free.
>>
>> The inconsistency smells a lot like an oversight.  Have you checked
>> with upstream to see if that was what was actually intended, or if
>> it was a copy/paste bug?
>
>         Not to me, it does mot. The info files do not really have
>  front or back covers, so there is no fron or back cover invariant
>  sections. Printed manuals do have covers, hence front-and-back cover
>  texts. Sounds entirely logical to me.
>
>         It also seems to be the norm for documentation that seems to
>  be coming from the GNU project,  so I think my take on this is
>  correct -- _ALL_ those documents can't all have the exact same
>  oversight.
>
>         But feel free to talk to upstream and see if all GNU documents
>  can be made DFSG free again.

Whatever.  The Emacs documentation is far more integrated into its
normal operation than with other tools.  It does not make sense to
separate them.

I suggest you move all of Emacs into "non-free".  Everything else is
just dishonest.

Anyway, it has just been decided by popular vote that GFDL without
invariant sections is supposed to be considered DFSG.  The argument
against invariant sections was that they could be used to render
software basically unmodifiable.  You can render software unmodifiable
if it is X11-licensed.  So what happens downstream is not Debian's
concern.

So the question is: if we have _particular_ unmodifiable sections, are
those done in a way that would render the software unmodifiable?
Debian seemingly has decided that it will not bother to actually look.
It is more interested in its principles rather than the interests of
its users _and_ developers in free software.

There is no point served in splitting Emacs into non-operational
crippled components.  Move it all to non-free.  That's your policy,
and it is nonsensical to complicate matters for people by putting
half-functional teasers into main.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum