On 8 Aug 1998, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > Hi, > > There are two nebuously related ideas in this message. > ______________________________________________________________________ > > I think I want to differentiate between the kinds of changes > that we are talking about here. If I write a standards document, I do > not want people subverting or otherwise modifying the contents (the > wrods that I wrote) -- at all. If they do, I want them to call it > something different. However, I could not care less if the converted > it from postscript to text to pdf or rendered tiff, as lon as someone > reading the document sees the same words in the same sequence. > > (modification means chaging, deleting, or adding to the words and > images that make up the document, format conversion themselves do > not constitute a modification) > > Any license for documentation, and any policy that Debian > institutes, should differentiate between these kinds of changes. > > I personally think that it would be permissible to accept > any document, including a standard, which is distributable with the > following restrictions: > a) the document is distributed unmodified along with patch files, > b) The document is clearly marked as changed, and, > c) the document has a different name. > > I see that marcus agreed to all these while discussing the > dfsg.
Absolutely. As far as I am concerned, that qualifies as modifiable. As you will see from my proposal (the informal one which predated Marcus's by a day or two), I personally find any combination of those 3 requirements (as determined by the author of the original) to be acceptably 'free'. > ______________________________________________________________________ > > > However, there are things (like a magazine cover, or a > graphical novel, where layout and formatting are an integral part of > the document, and modifying or altering them would detrimentally > affect the document/piece of art. > > As far as Debian is concerned, we should bear in mind that we > could be looking at documents that go beyond mere software > documentation, and I would like to see tham in main as well. > I disagree. They're not free. > So, if someone creates a graphic novel, that tells a story, > and distributes it freely in pdf format; allowing no modification or > conversions away from pdf; why do we need to change anything? Why > would we try and modify it after the author is done? Why should this > not be accepted in main? The modification clause may make sense for > compute programs, but for the wider domain of documents, I think it > may not make sense. > I personally believe that something like this is not free, and should not be in main. We are not in the business of distributing graphic novels, after all. Whilst I respect the wishes (and copyright) of any author, and I fully understand that they might not want to allow modification to their works, I do believe that the resulting work is non-free. So we can put it on our FTP site, but we should not put it in main. > I think we should relax the modification requirement for > anything that happens not to be a software programs > documentation. (even standards should be acceptable is they allow > modification with name changes/ patches) I disagree. If it doesn't meet our criterions of free-ness, we do not put it in main. Most of the documents we are likely to distribute - manuals, HOWTOs, FAQs, standards - all benefit from being free. I have no problems with those documents which don't benefit from being free - original, copyright-enforced works of art - going into non-free. Jules /----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd | | Jules aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | TW9 2TF *UK* | +----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \----------------------------------------------------------------------/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
