Re: GFDL Freeness and Cover Texts
"Michael D. Crawford" <crawford@goingware.com> wrote:
> Nick Phillips sed:
> > I wouldn't object to a clause which demanded "fair credit", but I would
> > object to a clause which demanded that that credit take a particular
> > form.
>
> Well I can agree to be flexible. Can you suggest either another license, or
> another way to apply the GFDL so that I can achieve my objective?
>
> It's not just that I want to ensure I be personally be given proper credit for
> writing the articles, but that I ensure that future readers are always told that
> they can look to http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/ for the originals or for other
> articles like it.
>
If you are going to allow people to distribute modified versions of the
document, I don't see how you can force them to make *good*
modifications. You fundamentally have to trust them not to do something
like "the following is a word from the original author; just skip over
to the next chapter".
This situation doesn't seem so bad. I can see someone covering up
attribution, so requiring attribution can prevent a plausible evil. (Although
it is surely already illegal in many cases to outright lie about something
like this, license issues aside!)
I don't see people intentionally removing a useful web link, however.
If they do remove it, or change it, then perhaps they actually have made
an improvement? It seems like a waste of effort to worry about people
screwing up documents and redistributing them. And even if they did,
wouldn't readers just read the original document? Internet access is
ubiquitous in most parts of the world.
If such restrictions are truly so tempting to an author, then perhaps
that author doesn't truly want to allow downstream modification....
Lex
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