Scripsit "M. Drew Streib" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Would it be a thought to distinguish between the different types of > documentation? Should a man page (designed to be strictly > technical/reference) be any different than files in the doc > directory?
There would be good reasons to use stricter standard for man pages, but I think it would be more natural to let the stricter standards apply directly to what *kind* of data you find there, than to how the text is licenced. As such the distinction would be better made in Debian Policy (assuming it isn't already there; I'm not too familiar with that document). Of course the kind of text expected in manpages is, by clear consensus here on -legal, the kind of documentation that *must* be modifiable. But on the whole I'd say that if it's documentation that's technically important enough that Debian wants to distribute it (in the doc directory or whereever), it is important enough to need the right to free modifications. > Could invariants be allowed more freely if policy dictated that > anything more than a paragraph or so be kept in a separate file? I think that would still keep the Gnu manuals out in the cold, at least in their preferred format as info files (a "separate file" requirement that accepts the numbered foo.info.NNN parts as really separate files would not solve any real problem in need of fixing). And in that case we might as well take the fundamentalist approach. -- Henning Makholm "What the hedgehog sang is not evidence."
