Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: > On Wed, 05 Jan 2005, Anand Kumria wrote: > > We wrote the Debian /Free Software/ Guidelines, there isn't anything > > stopping us from creating the Debian /Free Documentation/ Guidelines. > > Indeed. And as you suggested, we can just let the maintainer choose whether > a document is to follow the DFSG (because he feels it is part of the > software itself) or the DFDG (because he feels it is just a document). This > assumes the DFSG to be more strict than the DFDG, and it should reduce a bit > any resistance against the DFDG (since a lot of people feel that essential > documentation that comes with a program IS part of the software itself, and > I am one of them).
Here is my problem, and my take, on the situation. If we have a Free Documentation Guideline, where would these documents reside? In main? In doc/main? If in main, what distinguishes the bits in a document (README.TXT) from the program (hello_world)? If in doc/main, would there be a single source package generating the program .deb, and the documentation .deb? If so, what distunguishes the bits of the orig.tar.gz fromthe source (hello.c) and the documentation (README.TXT)? If we split out the upstream tarball, would there be a separate documetation cd? Perhaps I am Old School in as much as I think of software as being a logic stream, and hardware being the physical bits. Ink on paper is hardware. Pits in aluminum oxide is hardware. Aligned magentic domains are hardware. The logical representation of 1 and 0 is software. In this very simple definition, all of our documentation is software (except printed manuals that we do not distribute, except perhaps at trade shows in the form of flyers. Certainly no one thinks of a flyer as the Debian GNU/Linux Universal Operating System). Everything in our archive is software. Why would we create a second-class definition of software, to fit in common misconception that digital documentation is not software? Or am I just a dying breed? -- John H. Robinson, IV [EMAIL PROTECTED] http (((( WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above, sbih.org ( )(:[ as apparently my cats have learned how to type. spiders.html ((((