I think I would be willing to sign on to Branden's latest proposal (as referred to in the headers of this message), with two provisos. (I would also be willing to sign on to Anthony's debian-doc proposal, if the FSF agrees that it satisfies the licenses on its manuals.)
First, I would like to replace the 32K limit with a 0.1% of total documentation size limit, which I think allows exactly the same current manuals as Branden's proposal. Second, I would like an additional paragraph with a sense roughly like the following (I'm not wedded to the exact wording). (If my first suggestion is taken, then of course that part would change here too.) "The 32KB limit is a guideline for Debian developers and the FTP upload queue managers. It is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, and important cases may fall slightly outside its strict bounds; in such cases the Debian Project Leader may approve the inclusion of the package in Debian after the case and issues involved have been discussed on debian-legal." REASONS FOR THE ABOVE: I prefer a proportional limit for two reasons. First, a fixed limit invites the abuse of splitting a big invariant thing into a bunch of packages. Second, a proportional limit guarantees that we get some real fully-free documentation along with the invariant text. I am not wedded to the exact details of the exception-granting process I outline; it seems reasonable and I would expect that it basically never get invoked. But I think it addresses the need I feel for such a process, and does so in a way that at the same time respects the need for a fairly clear limit, and still allows for some fuzziness around the gray boundary if an important case close to it should actually come up. Thomas
