Why isn there a DFDG, Debian Free Documentation Guidelines, to complement the DFSG?
A number of people have proposed this idea, but have not met with any success to date. Serious consideration of adopting a DFSG entains someone actually writing one; this hurdle is surprisingly difficult. At that point, the obvious question that will be asked is why the proposed DFDG differs from the DFSG. In order to make a reasonable case, it seems necessary to justify each license restriction permitted by the proposed DFDG but not by the DFSG. Furthermore, it would be sensible to show how to distinguish which packages should be covered by the DFDG rather than the DFDG; why each particular restriction relaxed by the DFDG should be relaxed; and why they should be relaxed only for documentation but not for other software components, like code.
A number of people have proposed this idea, but have not met with any success to date. Serious consideration of adopting a DFDG entains someone actually writing one; this hurdle is surprisingly difficult. At that point, the obvious question that will be asked is why the proposed DFDG differs from the DFSG. In order to make a reasonable case, it seems necessary to justify each license restriction permitted by the proposed DFDG but not by the DFSG. Furthermore, it would be sensible to show how to distinguish which packages should be covered by the DFDG rather than the DFDG; why each particular restriction relaxed by the DFDG should be relaxed; and why they should be relaxed only for documentation but not for other software components, like code.
