Re: documentation eq software ?
Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org> a tapoté :
> On Sat, Aug 30, 2003 at 03:45:51PM +0200, Mathieu Roy wrote:
> > moa@dionysos:~$ ls --version
> > ls (coreutils) 5.0
> > Écrit par Richard Stallman and David MacKenzie.
> >
> > Copyright (C) 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> > Ce logiciel est libre; voir les sources pour les conditions de
> > reproduction. AUCUNE garantie n'est donnée; tant pour des raisons
> > COMMERCIALES que pour RÉPONDRE À UN BESOIN PARTICULIER.
> >
> > Who's this "author"?
>
> "Authors", then. Please don't degenerate to pedanticism when the meaning
> is clear.
Hum, I think you misunderstood my answer. I was not aware of this
issue in coreutils and I wonder about which author of ls we are
talking about.
> > > ? I've seen several pieces of software which made political
> > > statements. The author obviously felt that doing so was
> > > important. Should the GPL protect those opinions?
> >
> > The GPL is about software. And the main purpose of a software is not
> > to make a political stand.
>
> The main purpose of documentation is not to make a political stand.
It can be. If you describe why you wrote a software as free software,
you are making a political stand.
> Nor is it to describe why the software was written.
It's up to the author of the documentation to decide what he thinks
important to be in the documentation he's writing.
> Some people wish to include this in their documentation, and some
> people wish to include political statements in their software. The
> GFDL protects the first of these - the GPL does not protect the
> second. Why do you believe that they are different?
If the GFDL invariant section was used to include political statement
that have nothing to do with computers (like racist statement, as
proposed before), I would find normal to trash these documentation
that use the GFDL invariant section for a purpose out of the scope of
Debian.
But a political stand about computers within a documentation
describing the software does not seems a problem to me: it documents
the software! It's the purpose of the documentation. While at the
contrary, including the manifesto within emacs, for instance, does not
require a protection (it's not a part of the software and can be
safely removed, if present).
--
Mathieu Roy
Homepage:
http://yeupou.coleumes.org
Not a native english speaker:
http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english
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