Re: debian and the fdl

[Pat Costello <Patrick Costello Sun COM>]

"John Fleck" <jfleck inkstain net> wrote:
Re:Date: 21 Apr 2003 07:26:56 -0600

> There's an interesting discussion on the debian-legal list about whether
> the GFDL is truly free and what the Debian community should do about it.

The FDL how-to says that invariant sections give you a way to express 
nontechnical personal opinions. 

Scary. 

This is not a good idea in technical documentation. Although there are no 
specific references as such in the GDSG to invariant sections, there is 
lots of advice about not including personal opinions, wasting users time, 
and eliminating superfluous information. Look in Chapter 1 and Chapter 8 
for examples. Also, the implications for localization and accessiblity 
of using invariant sections does not bear thinking about. 

So, if the use of invariant sections is not on for personal opinions, on the 
grounds that personal opinions should not be in the manual in the 
first place, then when can we use invariant sections? Well, if technical 
information is in an invariant section then that part of the documentation 
becomes non-modifiable and ergo non-free as uncovered by the Debian 
debate. Perhaps there could be specific instances of exceptional legal 
information that must be retained for ever, which are extra-GFDL and therefore 
need to be specified in an invariant section. Such a usage, however, would be 
miles away from the personal-opinion-posting scenario envisaged by the 
Debian discussion, and indeed alluded to by the FDL how-to.

All in all, I do believe that we are best steering clear of invariant sections 
in GNOME documentation, and saying so in the GDSG. I am not saying impose a 
total ban on invariant sections, they are after all a feature of the GFDL, rather 
I am saying that if an author wants to use invariant sections then the author 
should have to make a case to the various interested parties, such as the manual 
maintainer, the application developer, the GNOME style team, or even the rest 
of the GDP. 

Pat