Re: Bug#207932: Statement that all of Debian needs to be Free?

[Jérôme Marant <jmarant@free.fr>]

"Michael K. Edwards" <m.k.edwards@gmail.com> writes:

>> They are out of the scope of the DFSG. They are neither programs nor
>> documentation: they are speeches and articles which are logically
>> non modifiable without the consent of their author.
>> 
>> Whether they are around or not is irrelevant to the freeness of Emacs.
>
> IMHO, Jérôme is right but for the wrong reasons.  In many
> jurisdictions (especially France, but other parts of US law besides
> copyright have similar consequences), copyright license does not and
> cannot grant authority to misattribute or violate the integrity of an
> artistic or polemical work.  These documents are not part of the "work
> of authorship" that is the Emacs program and documentation.  They may
> be retained or removed; but they may not be arbitrarily modified.
>
> Personally, I would retain them as a courtesy to upstream; users are
> no more and no less free to modify or remove them than Debian is.  The
> alternative -- to demand that all content other than license texts and
> other legal indicia must be arbitrarily modifiable in order to be
> DFSG-free -- is logically consistent but would require the removal of
> all remotely "artistic" or "polemical" works in the Debian archive.

At last, someone with some bits of common sense here!

Full Ack.

-- 
Jérôme Marant