-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday 28 September 2003 20:22, Barak Pearlmutter wrote: > Jan Schumacher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > Fair enough. However, all of these statements are removable, and > > > > their modification is probably not prohibited by the license. > > > > > > The flow of the argument was: one example of Debian's respect for > > > upstream authors is not removing these requests and offers. If they > > > were unremovable, this would have made a poor example. > > > > If they are also modifiable, then they are most likely also DFSG-free by > > the strictest interpretation. I don't think anyone has argued to remove > > such texts. > > You seem to be having trouble following this.
In the paragraph I am answering to above you talked about a GPLed program and statements in a README it included. If you want these to be unmodifiable, you will need to give it or both a different license. My point was that if these snippets are distributed under the GPL, which I thought you were saying, there is no controversy. > Again, I was referring to unmodifiable but removable snippets. Ok, that is a different point. > Like a > copy of the heart-rending email from his cancer-stricken sister that > inspired an upstream author to study molecular biology, work on > colon-cancer oncogenes, and write a biosequence-processing program, > which is being packaged for Debian. Stuff like that. Stuff that is > not modifiable, of interest, reasonable to include, not code, not > documentation, not technical in nature, not part of the program but > merely accompanying it, and small compared to the technical thing it > accompanies. Stuff whose removal would often impoverish our > understanding of the circumstances of a work's creation. > > De-facto, we allow such snippets in Debian. It would be reasonable to > discuss whether this informal but longstanding policy should be > changed. But that would be new separate topic, which (if we choose to > discuss it) should be divorced from attempts to resolve the GFDL > question. If there is interest in discussing this, let this be discussed in a different thread. But the GNU manifesto is hardly just a little snippet, and that and other political essays were what was being talked about in the GFDL thread. Regards Jan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/d0P44cR0MEP0sUQRAspKAJ9K6aeKaU7fYL5kxgfTxTuNzlMkMgCgvZvq LczqjAtO50iWahn81s3br08= =LsS/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
