Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman wrote:
Well, since Debian will contain only 100% Free Software, and I think most of us
(and you, if I interpret your previous emails correctly) agree that GFDL
manuals are not Free Software, it would seem to be a natural conclusion that
Debian will not contain them.
Manuals are not free software, because they are not software.
The DFSG very clearly treats "software" and "programs" as
synonymous.
This is actually not true. The concensus of debian-legal is that everything
that Debian distributes must satisfy the DSFG, whether it is program,
documentation, datafile or some combination of the above. Bruce Perens has
also confirmed that this was his original intent. There has been considerable
discussion about this on debian-legal recently, however I will try to summarize
the main points:
1) The social contract says so: Debian will contain 100% Free Software. From
discussion on the list, it seems the correct interpretation of this is
"everything in Debian is both free and software".
2) There are many cases where it's unclear as to whether a file is a program
or documentation (or both). Two examples are: Programs which have a (possibly
primary) purpose of teaching (such as "Hello World"), and files which can
either be interpreted as a program or as documentation, depending on how they
are processed.
-- Keith Dunwoody
[[ P.S. RMS isn't CC'd because I sent this to him directly, and forgot to cc
debian-legal at first. Oops. ]]
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