Re: `free' in GNU and DSFG?
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On Thu, 31 May 2012 19:42:58 +0900
Hiroki Horiuchi <x19290@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I know at least GFDL documents are not `free' in DFSG.
> In this respect, `free' in DFSG is narrower than the one in GNU.
> Is there any reverse case?
>
> Thank you in advance.
> --
> Hiroki Horiuchi from Japan
>
>
Aha! You seem to be referring to Debian's decision about the GFDL
concerning invariant sections. The Debian position statement about this
can be found at [1]. Because of this, packages like gcc-doc and some
emacs documentation (emacs23-common-non-dfsg) are separated into the
non-free repositories.
Concerning 'free': some do not consider documentation to be software,
which is why distributions such as gNewSense (which claim to be 100%
free-software) do include these without labeling them non-free.
I do appreciate that Debian separates out the free and non-free, as
decided by their goals and guidelines, but up until the release of
Squeeze in 2011 this was hypocritical. Before Squeeze, there were
portions of the Linux kernel that were non-free, and at that time these
were included in the "main" Linux kernel package used with Debian.
At this point, Debian began to separate out the free/non-free portions,
announced in paragraph #5 here [3]. Other projects had already
recognized this problem before, and had adopted the Linux-libre [4]
kernel. Now there is not need for a linux-libre package in Debian
because the "main" kernel respects the DFSG and non-free components
have their own package.
To answer your question, I do not believe that the "reverse" is true
anymore, though until recently there was some hypocrisy with the DFSG
and their application. Debian is not foolish, however, and
understands that some users will "need" non-free software packages, at
least for very basic functionality (non-free firmware). So, Debian
*does* provide some non-free packages to users, but these are clearly
labeled as non-free and users must explicitly request their
installation by changing their sources.list file. I for one like the
'non-free' Emacs documentation, and do have it installed on an
otherwise DFSG-respecting system.
I hope that this has cleared up your question regarding this.
[1] http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml
[2] http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
[3] http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110205a
[4] http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/selibre/linux-libre/index.en.html
- --
Aubrey
"There are two types of people in the world: those who
can extrapolate from incomplete data."
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