On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 08:48:17PM +0200, Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
> Where can I find the actual Debian-decision on the GNU Free
> Documentation License?
Branden Robinson writes:
> There has been no formal statement issued by the developers, but Debian
> seldom bothers with such things. We go years without issuing
> non-technical position statements under clause 4.1.5 of our Consitution,
> and most of the time our license DFSG-analysis process is relatively
> uncontentious.
Nevertheless, lack of something that can be pointed to as "official" has
allowed
RMS to remain in his state of denial. It would also appear that if the
consensus
(that the GFDL in the form that it is used for the GNU manuals violates
the DFSG),
then the announced policy of the release gods that this will be ignored
for the
sarge release seems problematic.
Given this, it would seem reasonable for the Debian developers to
formally decide
what they are going to do, since it would appear that a temporary waiver
of a part
of the DFSG is needed. Otherwise, vital packages like glibc are going
to have
release-critical bugs.
So, I would suggest that you guys approve a motion stating
1. What the problem is: the GFDL is non-DFSG-compliant if invariant
sections are
used (other than in whatever special cases you wish to enumerate);
2. Nevertheless you will permit the existing manuals to go into sarge;
3. You urge the FSF to work with you to settle this issue amicably.
I don't think the line that there is consensus on debian-legal will
wash, unless
you overrule the sarge release masters and take the manuals out now.
My role in this: I'm not a Debian developer, but I am a member of the
GCC steering
committee. Our manual is GFDL, and almost all of our developers are unhappy
about it. We're running into legal issues with things like
doxygen-generated
libstdc++ documentation (is it even distributable if it combines GPL and
GFDL
text?).
