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Re: Credits



Hello,

Kapil wrote:
>     I believe that GNU with the GFDL is headed for confrontation with the
>     Debian Community (which forms a big part of the Free software community)
>     over the issue of "invariant sections".

Richard Stallman wrote:
> That description is misleading--we are not "headed" anywhere on this
> issue.  We are already there, and we have been there for many years.
> We have been using invariant sections since the 80s, and we continue
> to use them.

I find this difficult to understand since the GFDL was created only
in 2001. Well before this happened people *were* distributing *all*
the philosophical material that accompanied GNU emacs distribution
even though there was no legal requirement on them to do so.

So something *has* happened to make you change your approach even if you
feel otherwise.

Richard Stallman wrote:
> Today some people in Debian object to the practice, but I don't think
> their reasons are valid.  I thought about the ethics of this issue
> long ago, and decided that invariant sections are legitimate.  So we
> are not going to change the policy.

I make the prediction that Debian will accept as "free" only documentation
that has no invariant sections other than material that is already
distributed with the base Debian system (such as the GNU manifesto and the
license).

I also make the prediction that you will change your policy in this
matter within the next 5 years *because* free software needs (a lot of)
free documentation.

Thanks for your replies. Regards,

Kapil.

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