4 ms·

Not even going to click, The BSDs have better documentation because their business model does not depend on selling texinfo manuals.

by nmz 4y ago

admax88qqq 4y ago
The texinfo manuals are great, but many Linux distros (Debian and it's derivatives) don't bundle them due to the GFDL license. Which is a shame. Some of the core pieces of GNU are really well documented, but people who start out in Debian dont realize this and are left reading mediocre man pages and outdated wikis on Debian.org.
- anyfoo 4y ago
  The best thing would be to do it like OpenBSD and not have outdated man-pages...
  - admax88qqq 4y ago
    Totally agree. I guess some distros think having no documentation is worse than having bad documentation. But I do think Debian and friends do a disservice to linux by not installing the GNU documentation by default.
    - rleigh 4y ago
      It's not about "doing a disservice", it's about obeying the licence terms. The GNU Free Documentation Licence has (optional) clauses in it ("invariant sections") which preclude making modifications to certain parts of the documentation, which makes it effectively non-free. While some manuals licensed under the terms of the GFDL are entirely free, several of the major GNU projects have large political rants embedded within them, which can't be altered. I can see both points of view here. If you write opinion pieces you might not want your opinion altering and republishing without your consent. However, I would also argue that a free software technical manual might not be the best place to put such opinion pieces, because there is a certain hypocritical aspect to championing free software rights, but not applying the same principles to the documentation of the same. It would not be difficult to keep the twain separate. Full disclosure: I voted against keeping GFDL documentation with invariant sections in the Debian archive back when I was a Debian developer. This is because one of the primary benefits of free software is that everyone has the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else. Distributors and end users have the same rights to distribute and modify as do the original maintainers (albeit they can't relicense under different terms). The GFDL invariant sections make one organisation or individual "more equal" than others, and that's against the entire spirit of what free software is all about. This is one instance where I think RMS really dropped the ball. I might not agree with all of his philosophy but it's usually well thought out, and in this case I think it's not well thought out at all.
      - anthk 4y ago
        Other distros like Trisquel ship that documentation and they only have free repos.
        rleigh 4y ago
        It all comes down to the definition of "free". Debian has the Debian Free Software Guidelines, upon which the OSI Open Source Definition is based. If you read them, you'll see that the GFDL with invariant sections fails the clause regarding "modification and derived works". Because it explicitly restricts your ability to modify and distribute. Trisquel may have a different interpretation. I understand they are closely aligned with the FSF, so may not agree with the Debian stance. This is one point upon which I do think the FSF is entirely wrong. Putting invariant sections into the GFDL made the licence firstly overly complex, and secondly made it incompatible with the OSI and DFSG interpretation of freedom. All just so they could include immutable political content in their documentation. The fallout from this made it a very poor choice to use for documentation, and was a spectacular own goal. If you follow the licence to the letter, it means you can't embed source code examples without being required to also include the invariant sections (you aren't permitted to delete them). This makes the licence impractical to comply with for a lot of common use cases. Overall, it's simpler to ignore the licence entirely and simply use the same licence as used by the rest of a given project's codebase. I did use the GFDL in a few projects at the time of its creation, but no longer do so after getting a better understanding of it. It's a bad licence.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      Debian and the FSF have battled over this years ago (https://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml https://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml). It's as much the fault of Debian as it is the fault of the FSF to update the GFDL terms (which is possible, as many works are licensed as "current version of the GFDL + later").
IAmLiterallyAB 4y ago
selling texinfo manuals? I don't understand, has that happened?
- wahern 4y ago
  AFAIU, the sale of printed manuals was one of the earliest income streams in the Free Software/open source community, and for GNU/FSF in particular. O'Reilly and maybe some of its contributing authors (some of whom were project maintainers or contributors) made appreciable money selling printed documentation. But calling any of those examples a "business model" for open source development is a stretch. The sale of support, OTOH, absolutely was an early business model. See, e.g., Cygnus Solutions, Red Hat, etc. And today many project maintainers make money in a similar manner, through contracts or outright full-time employment related to feature development and integration. But this happens just as often in BSD land as Linux land.
  - Gualdrapo 4y ago
    Then I'm failing to understand why not selling texinfo printed manuals is what allegedly makes OpenBSD documentation 'better'.
    - wahern 4y ago
      I think the insinuation is that the electronic documentation distributed with GNU- and Linux-related software was (and remains) subpar because of some early incentive to sell printed manuals, which would be more comprehensive and easier to use; whereas OpenBSD was never financially motivated to cripple their electronic documentation.
- sreevisakh 4y ago
  The GNU project does sell print copies of their texinfo manuals. But you could also download the manual and print it yourself. Buying the print is an optional way to support the development of the software.
nhooyr 4y ago
What texinfo manuals? Who sells them? Genuine question, never heard of this before.
- grumbel 4y ago
  The FSF is selling them[1], but it's just a printout of the same content as you get with the Texinfo pages. [1] https://shop.fsf.org/collection/books-docs https://shop.fsf.org/collection/books-docs
insane_dreamer 4y ago
what biz model?

Not even going to click, The BSDs have better documentation because their business model does not depend on selling texinfo manuals.

by nmz 4y ago

Not even going to click, The BSDs have better documentation because their business model does not depend on selling texinfo manuals.

admax88qqq 4y ago

The texinfo manuals are great, but many Linux distros (Debian and it's derivatives) don't bundle them due to the GFDL license. Which is a shame. Some of the core pieces of GNU are really well documented, but people who start out in Debian dont realize this and are left reading mediocre man pages and outdated wikis on Debian.org.

anyfoo 4y ago
The best thing would be to do it like OpenBSD and not have outdated man-pages...
- admax88qqq 4y ago
  Totally agree. I guess some distros think having no documentation is worse than having bad documentation. But I do think Debian and friends do a disservice to linux by not installing the GNU documentation by default.
  - rleigh 4y ago
    It's not about "doing a disservice", it's about obeying the licence terms. The GNU Free Documentation Licence has (optional) clauses in it ("invariant sections") which preclude making modifications to certain parts of the documentation, which makes it effectively non-free. While some manuals licensed under the terms of the GFDL are entirely free, several of the major GNU projects have large political rants embedded within them, which can't be altered. I can see both points of view here. If you write opinion pieces you might not want your opinion altering and republishing without your consent. However, I would also argue that a free software technical manual might not be the best place to put such opinion pieces, because there is a certain hypocritical aspect to championing free software rights, but not applying the same principles to the documentation of the same. It would not be difficult to keep the twain separate. Full disclosure: I voted against keeping GFDL documentation with invariant sections in the Debian archive back when I was a Debian developer. This is because one of the primary benefits of free software is that everyone has the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else. Distributors and end users have the same rights to distribute and modify as do the original maintainers (albeit they can't relicense under different terms). The GFDL invariant sections make one organisation or individual "more equal" than others, and that's against the entire spirit of what free software is all about. This is one instance where I think RMS really dropped the ball. I might not agree with all of his philosophy but it's usually well thought out, and in this case I think it's not well thought out at all.
    - anthk 4y ago
      Other distros like Trisquel ship that documentation and they only have free repos.
      - rleigh 4y ago
        It all comes down to the definition of "free". Debian has the Debian Free Software Guidelines, upon which the OSI Open Source Definition is based. If you read them, you'll see that the GFDL with invariant sections fails the clause regarding "modification and derived works". Because it explicitly restricts your ability to modify and distribute. Trisquel may have a different interpretation. I understand they are closely aligned with the FSF, so may not agree with the Debian stance. This is one point upon which I do think the FSF is entirely wrong. Putting invariant sections into the GFDL made the licence firstly overly complex, and secondly made it incompatible with the OSI and DFSG interpretation of freedom. All just so they could include immutable political content in their documentation. The fallout from this made it a very poor choice to use for documentation, and was a spectacular own goal. If you follow the licence to the letter, it means you can't embed source code examples without being required to also include the invariant sections (you aren't permitted to delete them). This makes the licence impractical to comply with for a lot of common use cases. Overall, it's simpler to ignore the licence entirely and simply use the same licence as used by the rest of a given project's codebase. I did use the GFDL in a few projects at the time of its creation, but no longer do so after getting a better understanding of it. It's a bad licence.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Debian and the FSF have battled over this years ago (https://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml https://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml). It's as much the fault of Debian as it is the fault of the FSF to update the GFDL terms (which is possible, as many works are licensed as "current version of the GFDL + later").

IAmLiterallyAB 4y ago

selling texinfo manuals? I don't understand, has that happened?

wahern 4y ago
AFAIU, the sale of printed manuals was one of the earliest income streams in the Free Software/open source community, and for GNU/FSF in particular. O'Reilly and maybe some of its contributing authors (some of whom were project maintainers or contributors) made appreciable money selling printed documentation. But calling any of those examples a "business model" for open source development is a stretch. The sale of support, OTOH, absolutely was an early business model. See, e.g., Cygnus Solutions, Red Hat, etc. And today many project maintainers make money in a similar manner, through contracts or outright full-time employment related to feature development and integration. But this happens just as often in BSD land as Linux land.
- Gualdrapo 4y ago
  Then I'm failing to understand why not selling texinfo printed manuals is what allegedly makes OpenBSD documentation 'better'.
  - wahern 4y ago
    I think the insinuation is that the electronic documentation distributed with GNU- and Linux-related software was (and remains) subpar because of some early incentive to sell printed manuals, which would be more comprehensive and easier to use; whereas OpenBSD was never financially motivated to cripple their electronic documentation.
sreevisakh 4y ago
The GNU project does sell print copies of their texinfo manuals. But you could also download the manual and print it yourself. Buying the print is an optional way to support the development of the software.

nhooyr 4y ago

What texinfo manuals? Who sells them? Genuine question, never heard of this before.

grumbel 4y ago
The FSF is selling them[1], but it's just a printout of the same content as you get with the Texinfo pages. [1] https://shop.fsf.org/collection/books-docs https://shop.fsf.org/collection/books-docs

insane_dreamer 4y ago

what biz model?