Skills classification -- proposal & questions

[GNU Herds work team]

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Skills classification supported now at the GNU Herds webapp:

  Initial flag
    * Pending to classify

  General flags
    * Unknown
    * Abstract

  The actual classification
    * Hardware is not Software 

    * Free Software
    * Almost-Free Software
    * Non-Free Software

    * Data is not Software
    * Documentation is not Software
    * Art is not Software (graphics, sound, etc.)

Note as Hardware, Data, Documentation and Art is not classified as free or 
non-free. Only Software is classified.



Questions:

Some fonts have not logic, just data. However, actually fonts tend to contain 
bytecode. Actually, the bytecode interpreter is enabled in most 
distributions, including Debian.  Are fonts Software, Data or Art?

Must Free Software distributions include only free fonts or is it allowed to 
include non-free fonts?

Must Free Software distributions include only free Documentation or is it 
allowed to include non-free Documentation?

If Data is crucial to make a program useful, should it be just as free as its 
Software?

It is fine to sell a computer game with non-free graphics and sound as long as 
the code is free?  So e.g. OpenTTD is fine because the code is free, you just 
need proprietary data files.

Why Software must follow the 4 freedoms but not Data, Hardware, Documentation 
or Art?  Is it due to Free Software is key to get a free society but not 
Data, Hardware, Documentation or Art?



List of tags and classification examples:

  'Abstract'              Web Development, etc.

  'Hardware'              HP PA-RISC (hppa), etc.

  'Free Software'         C++, gNewSense, etc.
  'Almost-Free Software'  Ubuntu, etc.
  'Non-Free Software'     Oracle, etc.

  'Data'                  Cartography/Maps, etc.
  'Documentation'         GNU Emacs Manual, etc.
  'Art'                   Logo, icons, etc.

The 'Almost-Free Software' tag will be applied only to software distributions.


Best regards,
The work team
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