Jerome, some of the responses you've gotten have been dismissive of your opinion, and a lot of this is normal debian-legal style. I hope you don't take it too personally.
I would like to understand your position better. I'm pretty sure I don't agree with you, but it's not clear exactly what you want Debian to decide with respect to the following: 1) Are works under the GFDL with invariant sections free? 2) Can Debian usefully distinguish documentation from software? 3) If so, is there a different set of criteria which should be used to test the freedom of documentation as opposed to software? 4) Should Debian include (in main) non-free works if they're not software? And some more specific questions, which I don't think have been asked directly, as most d-l posters assume "no" to be obvious. 5) is everything from the FSF free by definition, even if the license would be non-free for someone else? 6) should Debian grant special status to the FSF and allow non-free FSF work to be part of Debian? 7) should Debian leave useful stuff in the main archive even if it is later determined to be non-free? On Tue, 13 May 2003, [iso-8859-15] Jérôme Marant wrote: > Could we consider some invariant sections as "non-problematic"? This would seem to be issue #6. I'd say "no" for a lot of reasons, but I'm happy to hear yours. > >> But then, if we're seeking for enemies, I believe they > >> are not on GNU side ... Quite agreed. I don't consider this to be seeking enemies, but rather refusing to go along with a friend who is making a very bad mistake. > Err, it is a regression isn't it? I've always considered it as part > of Emacs, and even its online help. It has always worked like that. If it's part of emacs, then it's very clearly non-free software and the whole thing should be removed from Debian (unless the FSF doesn't have to follow everyone else's definition of freedom). > You mentioned in a previous mail packaging old versions of manuals. > This is IMHO pretty useless because noone cares for outdated manuals. Some of us don't care for non-free manuals either. There are a number of cases where I choose to use free software over non-free software that meets my current needs somewhat better. I'm glad Debian helps me make that choice, and I don't understand why documentation would be any different. > Althought people can be motivated in forking or reimplementing > applications, I doubt anyone will be motivated enough to fork > documentation and noone'll be able to be as up-to-date as the > Emacs manual. I see the motivations as very similar. -- Mark Rafn [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://www.dagon.net/>
