Re: Debian Free Documentation Guidelines was: License of old GNU Emacs manual
Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Jan 2005, Anand Kumria wrote:
> > We wrote the Debian /Free Software/ Guidelines, there isn't anything
> > stopping us from creating the Debian /Free Documentation/ Guidelines.
>
> Indeed. And as you suggested, we can just let the maintainer choose whether
> a document is to follow the DFSG (because he feels it is part of the
> software itself) or the DFDG (because he feels it is just a document). This
> assumes the DFSG to be more strict than the DFDG, and it should reduce a bit
> any resistance against the DFDG (since a lot of people feel that essential
> documentation that comes with a program IS part of the software itself, and
> I am one of them).
Here is my problem, and my take, on the situation. If we have a Free
Documentation Guideline, where would these documents reside? In main? In
doc/main?
If in main, what distinguishes the bits in a document (README.TXT) from
the program (hello_world)? If in doc/main, would there be a single
source package generating the program .deb, and the documentation .deb?
If so, what distunguishes the bits of the orig.tar.gz fromthe source
(hello.c) and the documentation (README.TXT)? If we split out the
upstream tarball, would there be a separate documetation cd?
Perhaps I am Old School in as much as I think of software as being a
logic stream, and hardware being the physical bits. Ink on paper is
hardware. Pits in aluminum oxide is hardware. Aligned magentic domains
are hardware. The logical representation of 1 and 0 is software. In this
very simple definition, all of our documentation is software (except
printed manuals that we do not distribute, except perhaps at trade shows
in the form of flyers. Certainly no one thinks of a flyer as the Debian
GNU/Linux Universal Operating System). Everything in our archive is
software.
Why would we create a second-class definition of software, to fit in
common misconception that digital documentation is not software? Or am I
just a dying breed?
--
John H. Robinson, IV jaqque@debian.org
http ((((
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above, sbih.org ( )(:[
as apparently my cats have learned how to type. spiders.html ((((
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