Re: A possible GFDL compromise
Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> Saying "you can modify the documentation, just not the invariant
> sections" isn't enough, incidentally, to answer this, because the
> attachment of the invariant section to the documentation *is* a
> property of the documentation. (Consider if there were such a thing
> on a piece of software: you can modify all these functions, but not
> that one. The result is that the whole thing is nonfree.)
>
> This would be like having a technical section which can't be changed.
> That would be non-free, but it's not what our actual invariant sections do.
Suppose the function you can't change is not technical. Does
something become "technical" because you wrap a defun around it?
A fundamental problem is "how do you distinguish software from
documentation"? It is certainly true that there are obvious cases,
but Debian is concerned with the cases where there is overlap. Among
other things, we are especially concerned that there are programming
styles in which the overlap is deliberately courted (Knuth's Literate
Programming is an excellent example).
Are the comments in a program "technical" or "documentation"? Would
we accept as free software a program that said "you must leave intact
the following political comment"? It would not currently pass the
tests for free software. What if I interweave the technical and
political parts?
The GFDL encourages a rigid line between programs and documentation,
between political and technical text, and in this it is already having
bad effects.
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