Re: The debate on Invariant sections (long)
Jérôme Marant <jmarant@nerim.net> wrote:
> Mark Rafn <dagon@dagon.net> writes:
>
> > If it's part of emacs, then it's very clearly non-free software and the
> > whole thing should be removed from Debian (unless the FSF doesn't have to
> > follow everyone else's definition of freedom).
>
> "The whole thing"? Emacs itself?
No. Ripping out the non-free parts has been done before for other
cases.
> >> You mentioned in a previous mail packaging old versions of manuals.
> >> This is IMHO pretty useless because noone cares for outdated manuals.
> >
> > Some of us don't care for non-free manuals either. There are a number of
> > cases where I choose to use free software over non-free software that
> > meets my current needs somewhat better. I'm glad Debian helps me make
> > that choice, and I don't understand why documentation would be any
> > different.
>
> Probably because free equivalents of non-free docs are not likely
> to appear, unless those non-free docs get their license changed.
> People don't like writing docs.
That's a very poor reason to accept a non-free license. The following
is _not_ something I want to seed in the DFSG:
- Documentation is exempt from the above criteria for freeness. No-one
likes to write documentation, so we'll accept whatever we can get
into Debian.
> >> Althought people can be motivated in forking or reimplementing
> >> applications, I doubt anyone will be motivated enough to fork
> >> documentation and noone'll be able to be as up-to-date as the
> >> Emacs manual.
> >
> > I see the motivations as very similar.
>
> Did people suddenly decide to love writing docs?
That's not relevant. The need for them will be made more obvious if the
non-free version get moved to main. Should we have accepted netscape
into main a few years ago then it was _the_ standard and nothing else
was available?
Peter
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