On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 08:53:24AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote: > I was responding to your post at > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/debian-devel-200308/msg03193.html, > which among other things appeared to assert that everything in Debian is > software, and that I am "willing to compromise the freedoms of their fellow > developers and our users". That I objected to strongly, as it is most > certainly not the case, nor has it ever been for me.
Perhaps I should explain at this point what I was and am trying to do. Being aware that discussions had been held regarding the GFDL's DFSG-freeness for a long time, one thought that occured to me was: is this even the right approach? Towards that end, a couple of things occured to me: 1) documentation is not actually software, and 2) if we assume that every bit of data in Debian is Software, then we are distributing non-free software all over the place (especially wrt license statements). Neither of these seem good alternatives to me. The fact that the GFDL discussion has taken these 2+ years already is a good indication that applying the "software" guidelines to documentation has not been as straightforward a process as it should (granted, there were other obstacles, but I don't think they can account for all that time by themselves). My goal in this is not to devise some scheme whereby the GFDL or the RFCs get back in main. I want us instead to come up with some more concrete guidelines -- even if they are just "here's how we apply software rules to non-software items on debian-legal". That, I think, will make it easier for everyone to be able to judge the acceptibility of non-software items, without getting an answer like "read 5000 messages and then check back with us." I fear that my attempt at first to try to stay clear of the particular GFDL aspect of this led to some confusion, and for that I do apologize. My time also has not allowed me to participate as fully in the discussions as I would have liked, and again I apologize for that. One thing that is clear is that even from people that agree that documentation is software (at least for the purposes of the DFSG), there is not a uniform way of applying the DFSG to that software. And THAT is a problem even if you disagree with the remainder. -- John
