On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 08:03:31AM -0400, Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote a message of 50 lines which said:
> So we had to search for ways to make sure that our message saying > non-free software is wrong would at least be present in the GNU > packages that they redistribute. We did this by putting invariant > political statements into programs and manuals. In programs, these > statements are included in the license text, in the preamble to the > GPL. In manuals, they are separate sections. I'm sure that no Debian developer will object to a blurb about the importance of freedom for software. Noone here will regret his inability to remove that blurb. But what if I encounter an Invariant Section saying that Social Security is wrong and that old or diseased people should be left alone and not helped by a public service? If I cannot remove this political statement, I cannot really regard the manual as free. And I would not want to distribute such statement, if I produce a modified version of the documentation. I often saw, in shareware or "freeware" programs, these sort of statements. Sometimes, I agree to the blurb and sometimes not but, in any case, not being able to remove it (changing it is a different issue) certainly hampers freedom.