Re: Documentation and Sarge's Release Critical Policy
Quoting Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>:
> On Mon, 2003-08-25 at 03:18, Jérôme Marant wrote:
> > Quoting Dylan Thurston <dpt@math.harvard.edu>:
> >
> > > > etc/emacs.1:under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
> Version
> > > 1.1
> > > > ...
> >
> > Requesting removal of GNU Emacs manpages now? Better move Emacs to
> > non-free.
>
> Or take a free version of the Emacs (say, from Emacs 20, if that's the
> case), and include it. I doubt command line options have changed much.
This is stupid, isn't it?
> > > Not too mention all the clearly non-free cruft under etc/ (including
> > > various essays, like etc/LINUX-GNU, allowing only verbatim copying).
> > > See Bug #154043.
> >
> > This "cruft" doesn't hurt and is not likely to be modified (who's gonna
> > modify RMS speeches and GNU Manifesto?).
>
> Someone who wants to publish them in a book? Convert them to HTML?
I'm sure there wouldn't be any problem with it.
> Excerpt large portions of them for an article?
It is common to ask permission for quoting someone speeches. Even to
give an article for reviewal before publishing it. But we are out of
the scope of software freedom.
> > It is neither documentation
> > nor program (considering that documentation is part of software now).
>
> Those of us saying that everything Debian distributes is software will
> continue to say it here - this is software. It's very very simple
> software, all it does is instructor an interpreter like less or cat to
> draw characters to a a terminal. But it's software, even if it's not a
> "program" or documentation for a program.
Let's play fair now:
>From WordNet (r) 1.7 :
software
n : (computer science) written programs or procedures or rules
and associated documentation pertaining to the operation
of a computer system and that are stored in read/write
memory; "the market for software is expected to expand"
I do not consider those files are "associated documentation". They
do not document the program they come with, unlike the manual.
> > Removing such files won't make Debian more free, IMO.
>
> We might as well add non-free programs that no one wants to modify to
> main, too. It won't make Debian any less free.
>
> I think qmail would make a great first package for this new "if I don't
> want to modify it, it's free no matter what" policy; I hear it's written
> so expertly that the author doesn't want anyone else perverting his
> "vision" of the code.
No, qmail is non-free software and would not go into Debian.
--
Jérôme Marant
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