Dato[1] has blogged about his reaction about the current positions agains GFDL in debian currently.

My concern wrt GFDL is simple :

  • documentation is vital for unexperienced users
  • we, fellow Debian Devellopers are NOT unexperienced users, and often either know where to find that documentation (like the GCC one) or don't really need it (for the KDE/GNOME apps manuals, we just know or guess how to use them[2]).

As a KDE packager, I would feel really sorry to have to prune any application manual, even ones without Invariants Sections. I'd like to remind some DD's that for some manuals, authors are not going to be found because they are not interested in Free Software anymore, or simply because they are dead.

I know that discussions with the FSF are really going nowhere (at least not fast enough). But still, I really think there is some possibility to have a new version of the GFDL where the DRM and transparent copies problems would be gone.

If we can have that, then since a lot of Authors use the classical licensed under the GFDL version 1.2 or (at your option) any later version we could accept in main any documentation that has no Invariant parts.

Free Software is about giving to *every* users more freedom. This GFDL story looks like taking documentation away from the users that needs it the most. It's :

  • an unfair choice
  • made by people that can live without those docs (I don't have any GFDL doc installed on my system that I've used. those that may be installed, are here because of some dependencies, not because I requested them to be here)
  • taking away the ability for some users to use their computer better, thus restricting their freedom[3].

It's not about a firmware here, or any hardware driver problem that you can work around by buying supported hardware. it's about having or having no documentation at all.

Notes

[1] I of course have seconded his proposal

[2] and if we have a question on an application, our question is unlikely to be answered in the doc, and we strace/read the sources of the application to be answered

[3] yeah, I got it, this GR is not compliant with the DFSG!</bad joke></bitterness>