Re: (end of) Development and documentation in Debian

[Andrei Popescu <andreimpopescu@gmail.com>]

Tyler Smith <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca> wrote:

> This has been getting increasingly aggravating for me, as I find more 
> and more of the documentation is either stowed out of sight in 
> non-free, or has actually been put in some sort of package purgatory 
> while someone decides what to do with it (ie. the elisp docs, which are 
> currently not in etch, although I did find them in unstable).

This has probably nothing to do with license.

> I do understand the motivation behind the DFSG, but should we be 
> considering everything that is stored in digital format to be software? 
> I believe free software, by Debian or FSF definition, is a good and 
> necessary thing. However, I don't have a problem with the author of a 
> document file requiring the preservation of invariant sections. It's 
> not clear to me how this is an infringment on my rights as a user. Do 
> we need to hold documentation to the same standards that we use for 
> programs?

Imagine someone writing a piece of documentation for a software, but
after some time stops keeping it up-to-date. Even if someone else wants
to take over and update it, it might be impossible to do so because of
the license. So instead of contributing the new writer just gives up,
because it would mean to rewrite everything. This way the community
looses twice.

Just my 0,02 RON

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)