RFCs - insufficiently free?
Posted Jul 18, 2003 0:05 UTC (Fri) by
jdthood (guest, #4157)
In reply to:
RFCs - insufficiently free? by iabervon
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.
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.
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