🚀 go-pugleaf

On 29 Sep 1998 14:33:48 GMT, Donal K. Fellows <fellowsd@cs.man.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <6uphsj$bcc$1@news2.tor.accglobal.net>,
>Benoit Goudreault-Emond <postmaster@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>> I beleive RMS meant only the actual technical documentation which is
>> required for programming.  What RMS would like is for every
>> programmer to be able to modify the *technical* content of the
>> manual; other types of contents could have a more restrictive
>> license.
>
>Would this be a bit like how things are with Perl?  The official
>distribution documentation (man pages) are free, come with the source
>and can be modified, but there are many other books about Perl
>available, none of which are a problem since their existence doesn't
>make Perl into something that is only documented in a proprietary way.
>
>Or does RMs hold the (IMHO ridiculous) position that if someone writes
>a book about GNU Emacs, then the content of that book[*] should[**] be
>given away free?  I hope not, as I really don't see how writing a
>proprietary book about a free (and well-documented, but then all
>systems should be well-documented anyway[***]) system makes the system
>less free...

The evidence of what has been actually *said* by RMS would be supportive
of the position that there needs to be free documentation for free
software. 

That is to say, if you *have* to buy a "proprietary" book in order to
make use of the software, then this makes the software of questionable
"freeness."

It is not real safe to extend this to imply that "All books should be
free."

Note that there is a proposal out there for "OpenContent," which tries
to apply the general idea of OpenSource to documents, modifying as
needed to handle attributions (which are arguably more important with
documents). 

-- 
'There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast
reflexes.' -- random unix fortune
cbbrowne@ntlug.org- <http//www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>