Re: No manpage for gcc is a policy violation
On 19/03/07, Matthias Klose <doko@cs.tu-berlin.de> wrote:
> draft of the GFDL, but in the meantime, gcc needs at the very least a
> stub manpage in order to conform with policy.
I disagree, the man page basically is a place holder,
It's actually quite bewildering and rather infuriating that "man gcc"
gives a very uninformative "no man page" found by default (the
explanation that all of the extensive gcc documentation is non-free
because it contains a page or two with unmodifiable opinion but not
because it contains an unmodifiable license nor even an unmodifiable
preamble in a license is bound to be confusing to the average user). I
still think that for a package of the importance of gcc, this
behaviour violates policy. Digging through /usr/share/doc (and digging
where? In README.Debian.gz? In changelog.Debian.gz? Should it be the
users' responsibility to grep everywhere to find the manpage Debian
policy says should be there?) for the missing manpage is something we
can save our users from.
Does the manpage itself even contain any Invariant sections? Does the
GFDL say the manpage can't be distributed without the gcc info pages?
Where is the invariant section anyways? I can't find the "Free
Software Needs Free Documentation" rant anywhere. After digging
around, I see that the "Funding" section is the offending invariant
section which seems to make the entire documentation non-free.
The file /usr/share/doc/gcc-4.1-doc/copyright file doesn't even say
where the offensive invariant sections are, and according to the very
terms of the GFDL itself, every declaration of the GFDL must say what
the invariant sections are.
adding a conflict to the gcc-4.1-doc package.
Conflict how? gcc-4.1-doc package doesn't even contain a gcc.1.gz file
or symlink, as far as I can see; they're called gcc-4.1.1.gz instead.
A paragraph in the release notes would be more appropriate.
No. That's not something the average user sees upfront, and there's no
reason why we should make confused users go dig around for information
that policy dictates should be there. "man gcc" should bring up
immediate information as to how to get the full documentation for gcc.
Sorry to get so worked up about this, but I really have a hard time
seeing Debian's point on the non-freeness of the GFDL. License texts
are invariant too, after all, and the GPL's preamble is another
unmodifiable section and an opinion piece that has to be distributed
with the rest of the software; does this too make the software
non-free? As for the remarks that small excerpts of the documentation
can't be separated from the rest of the documentation according to the
GFDL, this is nonsense: according to US copyright law, this is allowed
no matter the license under Fair Use laws. The gcc manpage can
probably be separated from the rest of the documentation under Fair
Use regardless of what the GFDL says.
- Jordi G. H.
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