On Wed, Aug 19, 1998 at 06:28:14PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > 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. Web archives are painful to get through in lynx and I've had very serious mail problems trying to deal with using earthlink's mail services in place of my own. I've lost a lot of messages on the subject. I have been looking for summaries. I haven't seen any labelled as such and haven't stumbled across any not so labelled yet. Perhaps one is in order? > 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. I'm likely to argue more than a couple of them belong in main, actually. > 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. I'm not certain Debian needs to even address freeness of documentation or at least non-executable things at this time. I didn't answer the first message of the two in my inbox because there was nothing really in there that's not in here, so here goes.. > 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.) I'm still not convinced those things that are good shouldn't be in main. > 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. This really should be with the package, when possible. If necessary, a case by case analysis may be needed, but not for most things. If some portion of documentation for software (ie the official perl FAQ thingie) is not modifiable, there's probably a good reason for it. No reason to call it non-free or even take it out of main. > 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. I'm not sure about this. Non-free standards could be considered part of non-free without hurting Debian, but if the point of non-free is a place to put things which DO hurt Debian and free software, leave them in main. This is probably the biggest place I can see a reason for a verbatim section. > 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). Personal opinions seem to belong in main if anywhere. If the above argument for verbatim for standards which aren't free is considered enough reason for it, then this would fit. I don't think opinions are enough reason on their own though. > 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. Indeed, I have considered designing a free role-playing system which would be probably fitting here if anywhere. I never announced my interest in it on the debian lists because it's not really related to Debian or Linux at all other than that I would be making sure the thing was accessable to a Linux machine and that's what I would be using to make it. It would be able to be derived from so the system would be able to grow, but I can see why you'd want to have things not be for the sake of plagiarism. As for my game system, it'd be the paper, books (web browser?), and dice type and it's not terribly likely to happen soon because so far I haven't found many people interested in a project of the type who wouldn't want to make a profit out of selling it which defeats the point. <sigh> As a sort of shameless plug here, if anyone reading this is interested I'd love to hear from you. Too long have gamers had to pay a small fortune in books which are made cheaply so they'll fall apart and cause us to buy new copies of the same books later at US$15-30 or more sometimes a pop, realizing of course that we often need as many as 5 of these books and that's not even talking expnasion sets. =p > 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. Same as fiction really. And it could be placed well into a verbatim dist if it existed. > 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. Here's where we get into lg and the like. If there's enough other reason for verbatim, these might be well-suited to fit there. I'd still think of them as fitting into main personally. > 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. Good, Debian needs some of these. We don't have an xwallpapers package yet! => Seriously, this would be a good candidate for verbatim if it were created. > 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. Okay, these are something else that could warrant placement in verbatim. > 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. The perl FAQ comes to mind. Why these wouldn't belong in main I don't know. Pprobably with the package they apply to for that matter, unless they apply more generally. Based on your arguments above, verbatim might be a good idea for those things, all of them. My earlier argument was perhaps misunderstood. I was saying that if it was non-free enough that it doesn't belong in main it probably belongs in non-free. As you can see, I think all of the above could fit into main. A couple of them could fit better into verbatim and that may well be reason enough to create that dist which would hold the others as well. My serious objections to things going into verbatim are licenses primarily and splitting packages up so they can have a main part and a verbatim part. If we can agree that licenses should be with their packages and that documentation which belongs to just one package should remain in that package, then I can totally agree with verbatim as a place for other things. As a side note, I'm still interested in your take on the derived license issues. I still say that going that way could be making a big mess, but maybe a big mess needs to be made. Again, I think a lawyer's opinion is probably the only real definative answer, but since when has that stopped us from throwing around our opinions? > A commune is where people join together to share their lack of > wealth. Stallman Appropriate little sig generator, as usual. You really oughtta see about packaging that.. =>
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