Why does Debian's GCC still have GFDL components in main? (was Re: Decision GFDL)
Steve Langasek wrote (in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200309/msg00007.html):
>Does this mean that the gcc maintainers don't agree with this list's
>interpretation of the GFDL, or that they don't regard this as a high
>priority between now and the release?
I believe that the maintainers want to have a document they can point to when
ignorant users say "WHY ISN'T THE GCC MANUAL IN MAIN? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?"
Perhaps they're also waiting for the consensus on manuals with no Invariant
Sections and no Cover Texts, which took longer to come to consensus. (The
majority opinion now is that the GFDL is not a free license even then, due to
the overly broad "technical measures" clause among other things.)
The GCC mantainers can correct me if I'm wrong or verify that I'm right which
is why I've cross-posted this to debian-gcc.
Could some Debian developer who is a debian-legal regular perhaps write such
a document and put in on some Debian website? Somewhere on people.debian.org
would quite likely satisfy the desire for something 'official'. You can lift
mine if you like. :-) Perhaps even a nice summarizing post on debian-legal
would do.
>Does the patch have negative side
>effects that leave the maintainers reluctant to apply it (such as
>leaving sarge without any gcc manual at all, even in non-free)?
Quite likely. Probably this could be fixed with little effort by uploading a
"non-free-gcc" source package though...
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