Bug#131191: tetex-base: Includes many non-free documents
Package: tetex-base
Version: 1.0.2+20011202-2
Severity: serious
Justification: Policy 2.1.2 (the DFSG)
The tetex-base package includes many non-free documents in
/usr/share/doc/texmf. I noticed
/usr/share/doc/texmf/metapost/base/mpman.ps.gz, which is a PostScript
copy of a tech report. It is apparently available in only this form,
but I'm sure there are many other such documents. Note that this
documentation is the only documentation on MetaPost; it is technical
documentation and needs to be free. ("Free software needs free
documentation".) I noticed this when I was looking for the source to
mpman.ps.gz to understand how it works.
"find . -name '*.ps' -o -name '*.pdf' -o -name '*.dvi'" in the 'doc'
subdirectory of the source tree locates 271 documents, which are likely
to be non-free. Even those provided with source may not be free.
Unfortunately, I see no solution other than putting all these documents
into non-free. Some of the authors may be willing to release the source
under a more liberal license, but it would be a great deal of work to
contact them all individually.
Note that there has been an extensive discussion on related issues on
debian-legal recently.
Best,
Dylan Thurston
-- System Information
Debian Release: 3.0
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux lotus 2.4.17 #1 Tue Jan 15 22:42:20 UTC 2002 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C
Versions of packages tetex-base depends on:
ii dpkg 1.9.18 Package maintenance system for Deb
ii texinfo 4.0b-2 Documentation system for on-line i
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