Re: REVISED PROPOSAL regarding DFSG 3 and 4, licenses, and modifiable text

[Bernd Warken <bwarken@mayn.de>]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 02:07:20AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> 
> If it's not *Software* then either,
> 
> 1) We must treat it as such, or;
> 2) We have no mandate to deal with it at all.
> 
> Please review the Social Contract.
> 
Exactly, so the documents go as 2) and are not ruled by DFSG.
As the (L)GPL is not suitable for all aspects of documents there is
a need for a more advanced license.  The only one so far is the GNU FDL.
If you feel that the FDL is not good enough then provide a better one.
But remember that the Debian history is not quite bright with major
members moving to commercial experiments.  

Debian opinions used to change like the weather.  For license issues,
much experience is needed.  The only reliable constant for protecting 
freedom was the FSF - during the last 2 decades.  So Debian would do
very good to come in terms with the FSF.

If Debian makes the groff documents licensed under the FDL non-free
without providing a license that garantees the same protection as the
FDL then Debian will risk a lot of trouble.  Then I would argue that
there are forces at work, who intentionally want to weaken the free
licenses in order to trash the whole concept of freeness.

I'm speaking about big trouble!

Bernd Warken