On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 02:21:00PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote: > * Matthew Garrett: > > > Perhaps an easier way to do this would be to look at the DFSG and work > > out what changes need to be made. We have a set of freedoms that we > > believe software should provide - rather than providing an entirely > > different set of freedoms for documentation, we should try to justify > > any changes in those freedoms. > > > > Personally, I'm inclined to believe that free documentation should have > > all the freedoms that we think should be provided by free software. Do > > you believe it needs more freedoms? Fewer freedoms? A slightly different > > set of freedoms? > > I'd prefer a slightly different set of freedoms, but this goal is > impractical. For instance, I believe that the GNU GPL is not a free > documentation license because it unnecessarily complicates the > distribution of printed copies, Complicates, sure. Unnecessarily? That's just you objecting to the principle of copyleft licenses; it is *necessary* to introduce this complication in order to have a copyleft. To the point of not being free? No. > * If upstream includes a copy of an RFC (that is, documentation > which is non-free but redistributable), should we really stop > shipping pristine sources? I can understand that we don't want to > build RFCs into binary packages, but OTOH, the pristine sources > concept has a reason. Pristine source is a very minor benefit. Free source is a very major one. Pristine source is just a 'nice to have': do it whenever you can, but don't worry about it when you can't. > * Shouldn't documentation include proper source code, including > source for most of its artwork? Yes, of course. Free software needs free documentation. It's not free unless I can modify it to match the changes I made to the software. Anything obstructing that cannot possibly be free. > What about documentation indexes? Should it be possible to > regenerate them automatically after the documentation has been > modified? Too vague. Sometimes. > * What about non-technical prose? Does it have a place in Debian at > all? Not really, but if it concidentally happens to be free then it doesn't matter if it goes in. > Can we aford some invariant parts, such as license texts, > copyright statements and legal disclaimers, credits, mission > statements, provided that they are neither executable code nor > functional end-user documentation? No. The exception is the bits which are required by law, not license holder (and then only grudgingly, but we don't really have time to sit and wait for legislators to get a clue). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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