> Do all the manuals released under the GFDL and present in nonfree have > an invariant clause? Personally, I don't want to enable nonfree just > to get a few info files on Debian, so instead I usually download them > from gnu.org. If no compromise is possible to bring them back to > main, maybe it would be possible to move them from nonfree to > elsewhere such as a new location solely dedicated to documentation > released under the GFDL? This way it would allow people like me to get > access to this documentation without having to open the door to all > the rest of nonfree software.
At least the Texinfo manual has no invariant sections, while it has cover texts, so it's in non-free (not checked all GNU manuals in the non-free section). Recently Autoconf, diffutils and Guile removed front- and back-cover texts to have their manuals included in main, so a solution is possible. (I'm personally not convinced that the cover texts are useful, not having seen a printed book using them and I believe there are other significant ways to find that "buying copies from the FSF supports it in developing GNU and promoting software freedom" as the back-cover text states. I'm also unsure how much worse they are than the advertising clause of the original BSD license which is accepted in Debian.) If we make a separate section for non-DFSG-while-FSDG-compatible packages, we could use it also for other unmodifiable works not for practical uses included in non-free if there are any (unfortunately most also prohibit commercial use or selling). (I'm not a Debian contributor nor user, I contribute to a GNU package which has a manual in main and to an Arch-based distribution on the FSF distro list.)
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