On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 02:19:59PM -0700, Brian Nelson wrote: > Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 06:23:14PM +0200, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote: > >> > That would be clause #1 of the Debian Social Contract. > >> > >> Where do you draw the line between software, data and documentation? I > >> get the impression that you are reading "Debian Will Remain 100% Free > >> Software" to mean "everything in Debian will be Free Software" instead > >> of "all the software in Debian will be Free Software". > > > > Well, of *course* we do. It would be idiotic and hypocritical to > > interpret it as "The software in Debian will be free, but the > > documentation doesn't have to be". > > > > We have historically allowed some free non-software things into the > > archive, since it doesn't matter very much. Why does anybody think > > that allowing non-free non-software things into the archive is > > acceptable? > > It all depends on how you define "free". I think that documentation, as > long as it's freely distributable and usable, is free enough. I don't > see any need to require documentation to be freely modifiable.
You have some free software, and it comes with a manual. You modify the software in a manner which suits you... but you're not allowed to modify the manual to reflect this change; the license of the manual requires that it only document the unmodified version, so any modified versions are at an immediate disadvantage. And you think this is acceptable? Why? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing, `. `' | Imperial College, `- -><- | London, UK
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