discuss: Modifiability of documentation and software
Subject:
Re: Modifiability of documentation and software
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
26 Feb 2005 21:44:27 -0000
Message-Id: <20050226214502.GD843@lafn.org>
On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 11:55:46PM -0800, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Hi
>
>
> > I think I would work out in many cases if the author tries hard. If
> > you point out to a site that it's a violation of the license, many
> > will stop doing it. People have reported that this has happened.
> > David Lawyer
> this can happen without licensing restriction. I think
> you are the person responsible for this within LDP.
> Are you refusing to make modifiability of the docs a requirement?
No, not if we have a consensus that it needs to be made a requirement.
But we seem to be divided on this question. In the past, LDP has had
long and complex debates on licensing issues which have taken up a lot
of time, hurt peoples feelings, and didn't result in much improvement.
At present, I think that we have much more imporatant tasks to work on
such as getting our collection of docs up-to-date.
One issue that I'm concerned about is our accepting of documentation for
non-free software. For non-free documentation, one can read it over at
no cost and learn from it. For non-free software, one usually can't
even read the source code. I think that for non-free Linux software,
the documentation should be supplied with the software and not via LDP.
However, docs. that compare Linux software without bias (both free and
non-free) are OK in my opinion.
David Lawyer
