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Re: A possible approach in "solving" the FDL problem



On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 10:52:51PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> That's the reason for the FDL; you might disagree
> with the way it does, but the FDL does attempt to defend the moral
> rights of the author.

Objection. Please justify this.

As best I can tell, all the FDL defends is the profiteering "rights"
of the publisher (by making it very hard for anybody to publish FDLed
documents, thereby letting you sell the published document for
profit). It has other differences from the GPL, but they don't appear
to defend any "rights" - just to inconvinience users.

> That could be an outcome of my proposed GR as well. However, as the
> situation currently is, a lot of flames are going on (which don't do
> much good either) on a DFSG-issue for which we're not even collectively
> sure whether the DFSG applies. Note that I said 'collectively'; some
> might feel that the social contract does apply, others might disagree.
> Thus, as a group, we're not sure.

I don't think we need to pay too much attention to the lunatic
fringe. Shouting them down works well enough; trying to write
weasel-worded documents which disallow their misinterpretations will
just lead to them finding different misinterpretations.

> The DFSG was written with software, not documentation, in mind. A lot of
> Debian Developers (those who have gone through the NM process) have
> agreed upon the DFSG with software, not documentation, in mind. While
> you, personally, may find that the DFSG can be taken and used for 
> Documentation as well, you can't just do this with the single most
> important document in the Debian project behind the backs of everyone
> else. We have to agree on that as a group before we try anything else.

Are you seriously trying to use a rationale like "Oh, I didn't really
*mean* that when I agreed with the DFSG, I only meant for things for
which I felt it was appropriate"?

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
 `. `'                          |
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