On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 05:15:50PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > I don't mean a Debian-specific license. I mean RMS giving the Debian > project a copy of the manual, with political sections, but without > marking them as invariant, under the understand that Debian would not > remove the invariant sections. Hrm. That treads perilously close to being licensing by another name. But RMS would, I expect, reject this. If I were him I'd realize that this would mean that some nefarious third party could grab the GNU Manuals *from* Debian, which would be licensed without invariant sections, and proceed to do things the FSF doesn't want done, like print the GNU Manuals without them. After all, an understanding between Debian and the FSF, even if achieved, would not be binding upon third parties. The only way to do this and have legal protections intact would be to have a Debian-specific license, and then we're back to DFSG 8 problems. I may not agree with the FSF's decision to pile on invariant sections, but I really would rather not do anything to get around them that would smack of skullduggery to the FSF. I'd much rather just ask them up front and be prepared to hear a "no". And, in fact, that appears to be what happened. See Message-Id: <20011127155358.B14227@deadbeast.net> and Message-Id: <200111291917.fATJHru17234@aztec.santafe.edu> for the exchange between RMS and myself. Nevertheless, I won't tell you not to pitch this to RMS. If he says yes, let us know. We may as well consider it. -- G. Branden Robinson | Debian GNU/Linux | Please do not look directly into branden@debian.org | laser with remaining eye. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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