Re: What RMS says about standards
Hi,
>>"Joseph" == Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@earthlink.net> writes:
Since you are ignoring all the discussion that has gone on
before, you obviously have far more cogent arguments than have been
advanced here before. I am eager to hear them.
Joseph> I'd say non-free is the place for them, actually.
Fine. Please explain why each of the following categories
deserves to be in non-free. Please demonstrate why these categories
of documents are so harmful to the community that you want to throw
them out of Debian.
To make things easier for you, there are compelling arguments
for the first two categories, since software documentation should be
as mutable as the software, to accurately track changes, and free
standards allow one to create documentation and/or derived *distinct*
standards from them.
manoj
ps. (BTW; verbatim was not a compromise on principle; it was an
aknowledgment that not all the world is executable software, and
there are things good for software that may be bad for other
categories; and even immutable documents have value for the
community. There can be entities that are mutable and yet good enough
for us to include in Debian; and verbatim was proposed to emphasize
the distinction. You obviously know better.)
======================================================================
Documentation for software
Technical documentation describes the behaviour, usage, and
configuration details about a specific piece of code. It may also
be instructions about how to modify or extend the software.
(Users manuals, etc) Examples include the GIMP Users Manual, the
GCC Internals guide, any source-code written with "literate
programming" tools, etc.
A Standards document
A standard describes is a common set of standard interfaces,
formats, rules, application programming interfaces, common
practice, conventions, etc, that other people are supposed to
comply with in order to facilitate interoperability, consistancy,
or some other public goal outside of the scope of one program or
developer.. Generally, this has the fax-like law: one or two
people adopting it is not of much value, a million people
adopting it and it comes into its own.
Personal opinions
Opinions of a person, whether technical or otherwise, essays,
open letters, USENET postings (assuming proper permission for
redistributin has been obtained, of course).
Works of fiction
Books, novels, essays, short stories, etc. The project Gutenburg
has a collection of works fo fiction for whom the copyright has
expired, there are tohers that give the right of redistribution
with certain restrictions.
Poetry
Defined as imaginative language or composition, whether expressed
rhythmically or in prose. Specifically: Metrical composition;
verse; rhyme; poems collectively; as, heroic poetry; dramatic
poetry; lyric or Pindaric poetry.
Magazines and graphic novels
These are publications where the layout is as important as the
contents. Graphic novels are rapidly gaining mainstream approval,
and there are already contless web-zines and other magazines
distributed purely electronically, and already Debian has several
such mags packaged up.
Art work, paintings, Images, Photographs
Rendered, ray traced, or hand created usig the GIMP, photographs,
line drawings: these are going to become more and more common.
Technical Opinion
Documents which state the opinion of a particular person or group
in relation to a technical matter. Unlike standards, this
material is not binding in an of itself, but serves rather to
influence technical decisions or to explain why or how a
particular technical decision was made. Examples include the FYI
series or RFCs, judicial opinions, NTSB crash investigation
reports, etc.
Instructional material
Documents which are written to teachtechnical material. Unlike
software documentation, this material need not be specific to a
particular piece of software, or even of software itself.
Examples: The guided-walk-through sections of the Kernel Hacker's
Guide, physics textbooks, US Department of Defence field manuals
on the proper way to brush one's teeth, etc.
--
A commune is where people join together to share their lack of
wealth. Stallman
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
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