Re: A possible approach in "solving" the FDL problem
Lynn Winebarger <owinebar@free-expression.org> wrote:
> And yet whoever wrote them seemed to believe "software" refers to programs.
This is not in dispute. Programs may be software.
> Let's see how many times "program" is referred to as thing being freely
> licensed:
[...]
> I count 12 places (11 if you exclude the implicit one) where the author(s)
> of the DFSG seems to regard "software" to be interchangeable with "software".
I'll assume you meant "program" instead of one of your "software", OK?
If that is correct, your statement here is radically different to the
assertion I quoted from the start of your message. Which one are you
trying to support, please?
I also can't see any evidence for this later statement in your message.
I count 12 places where the authors used "programs" as an *example* of
"software," which is consistent with your first assertion above, without
supporting the later one. The short forms of the guidelines do not seem
to mention programs at all, do they?
> The purpose of declaring "software" to be all-encompassing is to support this
> false syllogism:
Ow! This demonstrates *assumption* of falsehood and then looking for data
to support that. Of course, if you assume a particular outcome before
you start looking, you will influence your results. The interesting
question is: what are is this prior belief based on?
> Debian distributes only free software.
> Debian [desires to/does in fact] distribute free documentation.
> Therefore, free documentation must be free software.
Rather, free documentation must be free software for it to be distributed
by Debian.
Maybe you think that we want to prove that documentation is software,
or that DFSG defines "free documentation". Again, that's not true in
general, but there doesn't seem to be any hard reason that documentation
cannot be treated as software for Debian's purposes.
--
MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ jabber://slef@jabber.at
Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
Thought: Edwin A Abbott wrote about trouble with Windows in 1884
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