RFCs - insufficiently free? [LWN.net]

RFCs - insufficiently free?

Posted Jul 17, 2003 16:46 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
Parent article: RFCs - insufficiently free?

It's somewhat unsurprising that RFCs fail to meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines, since, regardless of their status as "Free", they're clearly not "Software". As such, the rationale of the GPL (that users need the ability to modify software in order to use it effective) fails to apply and the desireable freedoms are different.

RFCs are even less logical to modify than documentation. With documentation, you might want to modify it to keep it accurate for software you've changed. But RFCs are obsoleted, not modified, in response to change.

I personally think that, rather than putting RFCs in "non-free", Debian should put them in "non-software", for which there should be a separate set of rules, which permit licenses which restrict the modification of an original document, provided there is a suitable way to create a modified document. In this case, the procedure is to write a new document in the same style which references the original (and ideally submit it as a new RFC, but that's not strictly necessary, depending on your purposes). Nothing prevents Debian from distributing a package of RFCs containing (for example) the original RFC 822, along with a file which suggests that the whitespace and line termination specifications to be used should be the Unicode ones instead of the ones given in the RFC.

In fact, for an RFC, "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" is, in fact, the entire series of unmodified RFCs, plus a new draft of an RFC which refers to the prior work (at least, the people who do actually modify RFCs use this procedure). So far as I can tell, the GPL would prohibit the distribution of a changed RFC (were the RFC to be licensed under the GPL) without breaking out the changes into a separate document anyway (at which point the RFC modified in place is not useful).

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RFCs - insufficiently free?

Posted Jul 17, 2003 20:01 UTC (Thu) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

RFCs are even less logical to modify than documentation. With documentation, you might want to modify it to keep it accurate for software you've changed. But RFCs are obsoleted, not modified, in response to change.

True ... but in producing a new RFC, it is very helpful to have the right to cut and paste from an old one.

I think that's the real issue. The Internet Society only affords limited rights to cut and paste RFC material, so if they "turned to the dark side" you could no longer do this, and you'd have to write new RFCs (or whatever they would be called) from scratch.

Hence "non-free".

RFCs - insufficiently free?

Posted Jul 17, 2003 21:31 UTC (Thu) by southey (subscriber, #9466) [Link]

Cutting and pasting is just plain plagiarism! A new RFC means that that old one is wrong so you just end up copying rubbish. If you want a variant then just write the variation - far better than reading a new standard to find that it is not new.

If any person can change the standard at whim then it is no longer a standard. This is one of places that Debian is screwed up - the second is that they become non-free because they require 'free' software. Really they need to avoid the word 'free' period.

RFCs - insufficiently free?

Posted Jul 17, 2003 22:58 UTC (Thu) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

Do I understand correctly that you are saying that all corrections mean
throwing out the original work? I guess you don't believe in software
patches or book editors.

RFCs - insufficiently free?

Posted Jul 17, 2003 23:48 UTC (Thu) by jdthood (guest, #4157) [Link]

> Cutting and pasting is just plain plagiarism!

It is not plagiarism if the source is acknowledged.
In any case, _credit_ is not the main issue here.

> A new RFC means that that old one is wrong so you just
> end up copying rubbish.

> If any person can change the standard at whim then it
> is no longer a standard.

This is a confusion I have seen again and again. Debian's
concern is not that the standard be changeable. It is that
the document be re-usable for other purposes -- like any
other free software.

RFCs - insufficiently free?

Posted Jul 18, 2003 0:05 UTC (Fri) by jdthood (guest, #4157) [Link]

> It's somewhat unsurprising that RFCs fail to meet the
> Debian Free Software Guidelines, since, regardless of
> their status as "Free", they're clearly not "Software".
> As such, the rationale of the GPL (that users need the
> ability to modify software in order to use it effective)
> fails to apply and the desireable freedoms are different.

That is NOT the rationale of the GPL and the FSF. It IS
the rationale of the Open Source Movement; but the FSF,
which wrote the GPL, is more demanding: it wants software
freedom for its own sake. And the FSF believes that free
software requires free documentation.

It turns out, however, that Debian is even more demanding
than the FSF. Debian wants the _documents_ (not just the
_documentation_ that those documents contain) that it
distributes to be free too.

Some people try to support Debian's position by arguing that
there is no sharp distinction between software and documents.
They have some interesting arguments. However, even if there
is an essential difference between them, it does not follow
that "the desirable freedoms are different".

The main difference between software and documentation is that
there is a concern in the latter case about the integrity of
the author's self-expression that there isn't in the former
case. I care a lot less that my program is modified than that
my political manifesto is modified.

Even so, the consensus in Debian is that the concern for
integrity of the author's self-expression is, insofar as it
is Debian's business to protect it, sufficiently protected
by requirements that the source of material and changes be
adequately documented. Debian isn't in the business of
publishing people's opinions, and only needs to go so far as
to make sure that what it does publish is accurately
attributed.