Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Front page to wiki now modifiable again

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Stefan" == Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

    Stefan> Same thing with documentation.  Richard has a pretty good
    Stefan> idea of what he means by "documentation" when he thinks of
    Stefan> material that might use the GFDL.  Among other things he
    Stefan> does not consider docstrings as relevant because they do
    Stefan> not document things in the same way and should not be
    Stefan> written the same way.

Good for him, and fine for Emacs as long as the Emacs developers
generally agree with him.  I don't see how that contradicts in any way
what I wrote.

But Richard is not "merely" the guiding spirit of Emacs.  He is the
guiding spirit of the free software movement, and as such IMHO he
should be more careful about the implications for people who agree
with him about freedom but not on how to write software.

My point is that the generic recommendation of GDFL for software
documentation amounts to strongly encouraging his documentation style,
and makes work for people who disagree with him on the value of
generating manual text from embedded documentation.  In return, you
get advertising embedded in the documentation.  This is a win?

Of course, one can in principle use the GPL for the manual and avoid
the problem on a case-by-case basis, but I think this is asking a lot.
Most people just don't get the issue, any more than Mikhail apparently
understood what he was doing when he altered the license statement on
the wiki.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.