Re: Start for a discussion about free documentation in Debian.
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
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| Jules aka | jules@debian.org | Richmond, Surrey |
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