“I heard Richard Stallman talk at the recent open source
show The Bazaar in New York. He gave his usual stump speech about
free vs. open source, how he got involved in and developed the idea
of free software and so forth. One of the newer pieces of his
speech was a call for free documentation so people who update
software could simultaneously update the documentation. But what
really caught my ear was his simultaneous assertion that he didn’t
think novels needed to be open source. As a writer of documentation
myself, this got me thinking….“
“Although Stallman didn’t state it explicitly, the clear
implication was that software documentation doesn’t have or need
any such artistic protections. I’m not so sure I agree. Now, as
chance would have it at the show I also bought a couple of
Stallman’s own books, the GNU Emacs Manual and Debugging with GDB:
The GNU Source-Level Debugger. I like Debugging with GDB; I’m not
so fond of the GNU Emacs Manual though mostly that’s because I’m
not so fond of emacs; but, leaving that aside, if this is what he
writes for software documentation, I can see why Stallman wouldn’t
be upset if someone rewrote them. Both are very dry, technical
explanations of the software. Stallman’s own very forceful
personality only really comes out in the introductory material
where he discusses the nature of free software. There’s not a lot
of artistry here; just simple competence and explanation; which is
certainly a valid way to write. I’m not knocking it, but it’s far
from the only way to write software documentation….”
“Stallman’s always been focused on freedom for programmers:
freedom to modify code, freedom to distribute the modified code,
and so forth; but what happens to this idea when most software
isn’t code? And when most of the people producing software aren’t
programmers? Programming may be an art but it isn’t Art. The
licenses that are appropriate for software that’s 90% code may not
be the same licenses we want or need for software that’s 90%+
art.”