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

[Bernd Warken <bwarken@mayn.de>]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 02:03:38PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 07:24:54PM +0100, Bernd Warken wrote:
> 
> > Exactly, so the documents go as 2) and are not ruled by DFSG.
> 
> That's one possible interpretation.  I advocate another.  Do you agree
> with Thomas Bushnell or not?
> 
Only in his idea that something has to be changed.

> > The only one so far is the GNU FDL.
> 
> There is also the OPL, and the traditional FSF documentation license.  I
> referenced all three in my proposal; it surprises me that you remain
> unaware of them, unless -- as is popular -- you didn't actually read it.

The FDL was created because the OPL turned out to be buggy.
As I pointed out several times the traditional FSF licenses are great for
software, but are not suitable to protect documents.  The FDL introduces
the concept of `transparent' and `opaque' copies, being a great step
forward.  I do not know any other license that has understood the
necessity for this.
 
> Please see the "Impact" section of my proposal.
 
I do not find anything about improving the FDL in form of a bug fix.

> > But remember that the Debian history is not quite bright with major
> > members moving to commercial experiments.  
> 
> I don't even understand what this means.
> 
Some years ago, Debian had a good chance to become _the_ free GNU
distribution.  This was spoiled by Debian.

> I agree that concordance with the FSF is a desirable goal, but Debian
> need not and should not abandon its autonomy for the sake of this end.
> Debian is an independent project with its own goals.

Independence is important to balance the powers. But by intending to
deprecate all FDL documentation in a very non-constructive process, 
Debian seems to make war against the FSF.

> > 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.
> 
> This strikes me as a total non sequitur.  If this follows from what
> you've said, you're going to have to give me more signposts.

The main aim for having a license at all is to protect something against
theft.  Public domain seems to be the optimal free concept, but it isn't.
So we need licenses - good, hardened ones.  The FDL is good and hard.
Maybe it is too hard.  But things need not be perfect from the beginning.

Evolution is the basis of free software.  Another main concept is `code
reuse'.  So I propose to `reuse' the FDL to create an even better one. 

Bernd Warken