On Sun, Aug 03, 2003 at 05:12:55PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: > John Goerzen wrote: > > 1. Would removing the manual for Emacs, libc, or other important GNU > > software benefit our users? > Yep. I'm very unhappy with having non-free software (and software means > 0s and 1s -- so nearly everything Debian distributes except the > physical CDs) in Debian; as a user, I chose Debian at least partly for > the Social Contract, which this violates.
That's an overly-expansive view of software. You would include anything that is digital in that description -- audio CDs, DVD movies, off-air TV signals, books on disk, etc. I find it very hard to quantify Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as software, even if it was recorded digitally, given that the invention of software postdated its composition by a LONG time -- and that the invention of software postdated early recordings by a long time as well. I see it as fallacious reasoning to conclude that anything that is binary is software. If I use some sort of binary "Morse code" to send a message manually, why is it more of software than if I use the real Morse code? > > Would it benefit Free Software? > Yep. It would help promote the movement to have genuninely free manuals > for those pieces of software; manuals which could be integrated into > programs, used as help text, freely lifted from, etc. I agree that this is good. But how does it promote Free Software to strip manuals from Free programs? > I bet you thought you were asking rhetorical questions. No, I posed them in my message as things we need to consider. And you have :-) -- John
