Re: PROPOSED: interpretive guidelines regarding DFSG 3, modifiability, and invariant text

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    > GNU Emacs comes with some auxiliary material (non-technical articles)
    > that does not allow modification.  I think that should be ok
    > because they are non-technical.

    That's a perfectly legitimate position in its own right, but it cannot
    reasonably be construed from the text of the DFSG.

No position on this question can be construed from the DFSG.  The
question is what right criterion to use in a specific part of your
proposed guidelines.  The DFSG does not say much about this whole
area, which is why you are proposing to write guidelines.

    Is all of the non-technical documentation in the Emacs manual really
    Secondary Text?

I think so.  It is about the reason for developing the GNU system,
including Emacs.  Perhaps you are interpreting the definition term in
an overly strict way.

      Or is the FSF's
    intent to permit people to use the GNU FDL to protect a 3-page reference
    card for some program, accompanied by a 100-page novella

That would be a distortion of the criterion, giving it an unreasonably
lax interpretation.  That is just as bad as giving it an overly strict
interpretation.

    Hence my arbitrary 16kB (for non-documentation) and 5% (for
    documentation) limits.  I understand that you dislike these, but do you
    see anything wrong with me piggybacking my very large and sorry attempt
    at the Great American Novel on some documentation I may have written for,
    say, the SDL library, and using the GNU FDL to do it?

That's another case of arguing for one extreme by proposing an
opposite extreme.  Why choose between extremes?