[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 06:34:24PM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote: > > Tyler Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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. > > In international copyright law, there are rights belonging to the author > that he cannot sign away. These include the right to be considered the > author. This means that if the document mentions him as author (perhaps > on a title page) it is illegal to change that to, say, a different name. > Thus there are restricions on the changes that can be made to a document, > even if he chooses to allow it. Should we put every document that is > signed by its author in the nonfree category for this reason? In > theory, this would apply to code, too.
Doesn't this make the invariant section for copyright notice almost obsolete? > Perhaps we need to adjust policy about the meaning of freeness > when it comes to documentation. There may be appropriate > restrictions to allow in documantation, and others to forbid. > Perhaps a new license is appropriate as a model for future authors, > perhaps not. Perhaps new category of repositoris between free and > nonfree ... > > Merely considering reams of documentation to be nonfree is not the > long-term solution. We need something positive as well. This thread made me curious so I browsed the archives a bit. It seems documentation licenses have been discussed for several *years* on debian-legal. One example thread starts here: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/08/msg00693.html Apparently GFDL has more issues then just the invariant sections. Whether you approve or not is a completely different issue. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]