Re: The debate on Invariant sections (long)
Jérôme Marant said:
>En réponse à Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org>:
>
>> On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 09:37:31AM +0200, Jérôme Marant wrote:
>> > What is the best way to convince GNU people to change their
>> licenses?
>> > (without being pissed of, that is).
>>
>> I'm not sure "GNU people" need to be convinced. The only person I
>> know
>> of who has come out in vigorous defense of the GNU FDL is Richard
>> Stallman.
>
> (Georg Greve does also agree)
>
> It seems to be. But if so, why do they seem not to try to
> convince him?
Well. There are several categories of "GNU People". If you mean
contributors to FSF-copyrighted projects, then these are the views I've
seen:
1. The FDL is repugnantly non-free. We tried to convince RMS, who runs
the FSF as his personal fiefdom, and he wouldn't listen. What can
we do now? (There are a fair number of us in this category.)
2. I don't care about documentation licensing.
3. I don't care about documentation at all.
4. I don't care about "freedom" of software or documentation, as
long as I can use it. (This is a surprising collection of people, who
simply use GCC or Autoconf, for example, and want to "help out", but would
probably do the same for Microsoft Windows if they could. Linus
Torvalds would belong in this category...)
5. If RMS says it, it must be right. (Mostly the uninformed. A few
others.)
6. Having a legal guarantee that RMS's screeds are attached to the
corresponding manuals is more important than the downside. A little
tiny bit more important. (This doesn't seem to be many people, and they
don't seem to feel too strongly about it.)
7. Invariant sections aren't free, but RMS is so insistent that we
shouldn't bother to complain, because it isn't that important.
8. No comment. (I have no idea what these people think.)
--
If you mean FSF employees, there aren't very many and they generally
defer to RMS, as far as I can tell.
If you mean people who operate GNU projects *not* under FSF copyright, I
don't know any of their opinions. Sorry. :-)
--Nathanael
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