[Fsf-Debian] GNU Emacs docs (and GCC and others) are not DFSG free

Michał Masłowski mtjm at mtjm.eu
Mon Jul 9 12:50:22 UTC 2012


> Do all the manuals released under the GFDL and present in nonfree have
> an invariant clause? Personally, I don't want to enable nonfree just
> to get a few info files on Debian, so instead I usually download them
> from gnu.org. If no compromise is possible to bring them back to
> main,  maybe it would be possible to move them from nonfree to
> elsewhere such as a new location solely dedicated to documentation
> released under the GFDL? This way it would allow people like me to get
> access to this documentation without having to open the door to all
> the rest of nonfree software.

At least the Texinfo manual has no invariant sections, while it has
cover texts, so it's in non-free (not checked all GNU manuals in the
non-free section).  Recently Autoconf, diffutils and Guile removed
front- and back-cover texts to have their manuals included in main, so a
solution is possible.

(I'm personally not convinced that the cover texts are useful, not
having seen a printed book using them and I believe there are other
significant ways to find that "buying copies from the FSF supports it in
developing GNU and promoting software freedom" as the back-cover text
states.  I'm also unsure how much worse they are than the advertising
clause of the original BSD license which is accepted in Debian.)

If we make a separate section for non-DFSG-while-FSDG-compatible
packages, we could use it also for other unmodifiable works not for
practical uses included in non-free if there are any (unfortunately most
also prohibit commercial use or selling).

(I'm not a Debian contributor nor user, I contribute to a GNU package
which has a manual in main and to an Arch-based distribution on the FSF
distro list.)
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