Re: [GNU-linux-libre] (no subject)

[Patrick 'P. J.' McDermott]

On 2014-08-02 04:33, Michał Masłowski wrote:
>> * The man pages in man-pages-posix-2003-a.tar.xz are non-free
> 
> Debian has them in nonfree, Parabola includes them.
> 
> The license is at [0], includes the following:
> 
>   Redistribution of this material is permitted so long as this notice
>   and the corresponding notices within each POSIX manual page are
>   retained on any distribution, and the nroff source is included.
>   Modifications to the text are permitted so long as any conflicts with
>   the standard are clearly marked as such in the text.
> 
> Problems:
> 
> - are derivatives that aren't using nroff allowed?
> 
> - if conflicts with the standard need to be marked in every place where
>   they are, it practically cannot be used as base for documentation of
>   implementations or competing standards; this is why Debian puts it in
>   nonfree

One could argue that the the usual Cover Texts in GNU manuals prevent
such manuals from being used as the base for documentation for non-GNU
packages.  I understand how this is a practical issue, but I'm not sure
it makes these manual pages non-free under the FSD and FSDG.

An additional practical issue is that the requirement that "nroff source
is included" with all distributions makes some non-source distributions
awkward.  How do you publish printed copies of these manual pages?  The
GNU FDL allows one to refer in the printed copies to a network location
where the source files can be found; this license requires that printed
copies include nroff sources.

Again, the FSD and FSDG don't cover this (requiring only that sources be
available), and I'm not sure it actually makes the manual pages
non-free.

For what it's worth, there are some other opinions on debian-legal [1]
(with regard to the DFSG, of course).

[1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/06/msg00173.html

-- 
Patrick "P. J." McDermott
  http://www.pehjota.net/
Lead Developer, ProteanOS
  http://www.proteanos.com/