On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 08:15:11PM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> I suggest two additional documents be drafted, each almost identical
> to the DFSG. The DFDocG and the DFDataG (for the sake of example
> names).
The sole reason why these documents have not already been drafted is
because nobody who wants them to exist has been able to draft them in
a way that is all of these things:
a) self-consistent
b) sufficiently restrictive to prohibit things that are blatanly
non-free
c) not precisely equivalent to the DFSG
I've seen a few attempts that failed one or more of these criteria
(that's a list of stuff that people have done wrong before, not an
exhaustive list of all the things that must be done). I have seen
nobody try for very long. In the absence of evidence to the contrary,
I do not believe that it is possible to create sane guidelines for
documentation that are not equivalent to the DFSG.
I do not accept or condone the notion of permitting non-modifiable
documentation, and nor does the FSF[0]. The GFDL does not permit
non-modifiable documentation. I'm not convinced that any of the other
things you listed are non-modifiable either.
Some of the RFCs are genuinely non-modifiable, and these should not be
included in Debian. (For a specification such as an RFC, it is of
vital importance that modification be permitted - even more so than
for documentation; failing to do this is a significant barrier to
making enhancements to the specification.)
There is also the difficulty of distinguishing between programs,
documentation, and data. These are overlapping categories.
[0] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html
--
.''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
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