Re: Inconsistencies in our approach
Nathanael Nerode wrote:
Lynn Winebarger <owinebar@free-expression.org>
It can also be turned around - why claim everything is software except
to force DSFG restrictions where they are unnecessary or undeserved?
One good definition of software is "the part of a computer that's not
hardware". Another is "Information in a format designed
to be read by a machine". It's hardly artificial to use these
definitions and say that everything Debian distributes, except the
physical CDs, is software.
Oh, but it is artificial. The common usage of software refers only
to programs. While it is true that every program can be viewed as
an interpreter and its input as a program in the language defined by
that interpreter (e.g. every file is a valid program in the "more" language),
and that it is useful to think that way when designing
a program, it is not true that it's useful or honest to use
the term "software" like that in other contexts.
If you want all electronic data in Debian to be free, then you should
slap the title "Debian Free Electronic Data Guidelines" on the
DFSG instead of resorting to a non-standard definition. If this usage
of "software" was not artificial, or if there was no discernible (by
the human eye) difference between documentation and software, then
you wouldn't have these complaints cropping up.
Anyway, nobody's trying to force DFSG restrictions where they are
'unnecessary'.
Apparently some people do think they are unnecessary, or there wouldn't
be (have been) a flap over the GFDL.
The point has already been made that the DFSG requirements *are*
just as necessary for documentation as they are for
programs. (The same motivations apply.)
Then the intellectually honest approach is to say the guidelines are
for both software and documentation, not to say the set of software contains
the set of documentation.
I can only assume that it was easier for the people on debian-legal (at
least) to stretch the definition of software to cover everything they wanted
to be free than to get a vote to officially change the guidelines to reflect
the expansion.
It's fine with me if Debian has its own independent notions of freedom
for documentation and/or all electronic data, BTW.
Lynn
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