* Alfred M. Szmidt ams@gnu.org [060213 21:27]:
FDL licensed documentation isn't non-free software, it isn't even free software. It is documentation.
Here we differ. There are just different definitions of what software means. But this does not change the fact that freedom matters. There are of course different forms of freedom needed for different things. For things like (printed) books I think those freedoms the FDL offers are quite good, also a bit annoying, as those cover and back texts have no sensible restriction on their content and cannot be removed if they get absurd. But alas, publishers may be hard to pressured to publish anything free (I don't know, as I never tried), and we accept many restrictions to our freedoms for some gains, so (printed) books are perhaps still good if they do not offer all those freedoms we mean when we speak about "free software". I hope all participants in this discussion agree that those freedoms we associate with the words "free software" are needed for computer programs (as we are playing word games here, I better write "computer programs" before we end at theatre or TV schedules). Motives may differ, I think it is immoral to force people to cope with buggy programs or simply programs doing something different than they want with the ability but not the legal freedom to change this. And even worse than forbidding people to help themselves it to forbid them to help others. Now, what do those programs running my computer consist of? There are of course statements meant for a compiler or interpreter, but there is more: there are variable names and comments between them. Now variable names we better forget and look at comments, they are clearly documentation in every sense I can think of. (Unless they are false, then someone might argue they are no documentation, but let's not dive into that). While there is some easy way to say which parts cause the compiler to do things and which do not, that does not mean the source (in the sense of "preferred form of modification") is only the parts that do. A comment may describe an algorithm in such a form someone may throw away the implementation and just translate the description again to code. While copyright laws do only cover expression and not the ideas behind it, most such "translations" will have more of renarrations than of translations, but only if you no longer count any pseudocodes as the "documentation licensed" part. Or at least not those forms of pseudocode in the documentation that are more speech than pseudocode (Good finding any criterium for separating). And then there are not only compilers, but interpreters, where you may have restrictions on the size. You might want to remove all comments (and all invariant secions those documentation contained, as we all know, documentation does not need the same freedoms, *cough*) to put it on some bootfloppy. Well, all comments except that one descriping the boot parameters people may need there. So do I have to rewrite that comment under a free license? This leads me to believe that those parts of the documentation are part of the source of the program. (And are both software (or if you prefer to call other things software, let's call it "things we want the full freedoms of free software for") and documentation).
But software is not only the source code with its comments, it need more things to work (even though one may say those things are not part of the software, as it is no program and thus not software by some definitions): one needs labels for some ui elements, catalogs with translations of those, if it is a gui also icons, contents of help- tags popping up, perhaps even some animations showing what the program does. Those form a integral part of the program, and being able to change the program logics but not those ui elements is annoying, as if forcing to separate them, as some variant may want to embed the icons or help texts within the source. Thus those things should clearly have all the freedoms attached to them the program code has.
Let's look from the other side. Common (well, still quite common, call me a bit old fashioned if you like) forms to write documentation are systems hardly to distinguish from programing languages by people grown up with "ms word". While I personally seldom write in postscript due to its lack for German umlauts, I regulary use groff or LateX, with non-trivial formatting "programs" in them, sometimes separated in a good semantic mark-up style, sometimes tightly interwoven with the actual texts. Do those formatting/text-processing programs within the documentation's source need different freedoms than other programs?
So there is documentation within programs, and there are programs within documentation, and many things hard to distinguish. And many things shifting between those. Take a documentation of some interface, add some machine parsable tags to generate headers file from it, which freedoms do you need? (There are some claims that there are even FSF projects generating some GPLed headers from FDLed documentation currently floating around, but if those aren't why shouldn't someone else want to add something like that?).
So there are many reasons to not make a distinguish between all those bits contained in an OS by some undefinable criterias wheather they cause the creation of something the CPU interprets (machine code) or to be interpreted by something interpreted by the CPU (scripts) one the one side, and things interpreted by something interpreted by the CPU (images, texts, ...).
Looking at different definitions of software, many older ones are things like old WordNet definition:
n : (computer science) written programs or procedures or rules and associated documentation pertaining to the operation of a computer system and that are stored in read/write memory
That is of course an old definition. An pressed CD can still contain software, though it is not writeable in any sense. Although many people today believe the documentation is not part of the software. But I think this is mostly caused by the bad habit of propietary program distribution without source, as I tried to describe above that source and documentation are some entity, and if you are a mere consumer without the potential to construct, program and documentation tend to be seen as seperate entitites.
But even if you prefer to not call anything that is documentation software, all the things stored on computers to make them operate and to make humans able to operate them, should be free. And not only some reduced "I do not want to do this, so noone else should want to do this" freedom, but the same full freedom free software needs, weather you call that free software, free creamware, or free "things stored somewhere in bits"ware.
Nor is FDL-licensed documentation removed, it is _moved_ to the non-free section. Which is part of Debian, desite whatever claims people will make.
Well, here we come back to names and definitions. The Debian project are many people, which non-free stuff is clearly not part. The Debian OS or Debian Distribution consists (with some exceptions, like some things overlooked, some stuff slipped in and not yet thrown out in the hope it might be relicensed) only out of free software. (And the Debian OS and Debian Distribution and Debian Release are clearly words Debian is up to define). Thus the "Debian" you refer to, which has non-free parts can only be something like "those things the Debian project maintains" or "those things mirrors put in the debian/" or "software some people refer to when they talk about Debian". In those meanings your sentence would be correct. But Debian does not promise those will be free, but that it will create a 100% free operating system, which it really tries. (Though of course fails, like the Gnu FDL stuff slipped in, and I am sure in those thousends plenty of programs with some non-free parts slipped in could be found by some omniscient being, as erring is human, and before the GNU project changes this many people did not care much for licenses). Of course the Debian Project also maintains some additional set of packages, in addition to the self-contained free Debian Operating System, which are either not free enough by our guidelines (non-free) or depend on something of this kind (contrib). Those sections are clearly marked as such, need additional manual intervention to even be visible to the package installers and reside in clearly named directories on the mirrors.
This acknoledges that world is not perfect. That while 100% free software is important, some people have to make compromises to get as much free software as possible. Some not-so-evil things like povray, which is mostly only too old to have a free license or to easily change to one, or documentation under FDL, which might be the only one for some programs without which some people might not be able to use free software. Or even worse things like drivers needed for hardware of incoperative vendors or even non-free software some people might not get rid of easily.
Offering some such clearly marked and separated additions to the Debian distribution served two purposes: On the one hand it helps people to use at much free software as possible by not making them waste all their energy to get something working when they are caught in without all their freedoms, so that they have more energy trying to free themself by escaping that non-free stuff. On the other hand it is just practical to keep the Debian promise and the Debian distribution pure. There is no pressure to knowlingly include or keep non-free stuff, so people do not easily get caught, finding themselves depending on stuff they do not have allowance to use the way they want. (Didn't that ututo-e distributed by ftp.gnu.org not contain some non-free graphic card drivers some time ago?)
Bernhard R. Link