On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 07:46:19PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote: > > > There is neither source code nor compiled code for my King James Bible in > > > free-form ASCII text. > > > > This is an example of why they are guidelines, not rules. It is simple > > for an intelligent person to interpret this in a sensible manner for > > documentation. > > If by "interpret" you mean "ignore DFSG #2", which seems to be what happens > in practice, OK. It isn't. For plain text, the "source code" is fairly obviously the text itself - there is no binary form. For latex or docbook sgml, the "source code" should be pretty obvious. Likewise for manpages. > But is that really the kind of thing you want to do? What > would you tell me, as an author, to do to distribute something that can be > compiled into machine code out of my plain text prose? Distribute the plain text along with it. That seems pretty clear to me. > > We have not, to date, had any difficulty in interpreting the DFSG as > > applied to documentation, excluding the lunatic fringe who appear, > > I think that the persistence and size of this thread provides more than > enough evidennce to debunk that claim. So you accept the baseless noise-generation of the lunatic fringe as evidence? Sorry, you won't get any sympathy for that perspective here. As a general rule, the only thing that you can be sure about when a thread is large is that there are a number of morons participating in it. Notably, it does *not* mean that there is significant disagreement. Making a quick scan of the archives, I can only see less than a dozen people in recent history who have argued against the consensus on these issues, none of who presented arguments which were not refuted. For both the RFCs and the FDL, numerous arguments (that were not refuted) have been presented as to why they are non-free. > My mind is open and I remain willing to accept that there may be someone out > there that can come up with equitable guidelines. But I perceive a very > real inequity in the very prominent example I keep citing in the GPL. I said it's a FAQ, and I meant it. Somebody comes up with this one about once every month or two. It remains bogus. > > > Why is it OK to include the GPL in our system but not other bits of > > > documentation? > > > > This is virtually a FAQ. > > > > Firstly, even if that statement was not present, the license would > > still be unmodifiable and non-removable; that is the nature of > > copyright. > > The license would be unmodifiable and non-removable *solely as it pertains > to the package to which it was affixed*. Correct, and that is the sense in which we distribute it unmodified. > However, barring protections on > the license itself, I could take the text of the GPL, modify it, and apply > the modified version to my own software -- or just publish the Goerzen > Public License version 2. (Nah, that wouldn't be confusing at all...) > > The copyright statement on the GPL prevents me from doing this. > > It seems *very* similar to the RFC problem. This is the second point, below. > > Secondly, there is no convincing reason to believe that this statement > > is binding in law, because nobody has presented any evidence that > > copyright subsists in a license _at all_. Remember, copyright is not a > > natural thing, it was invented in the past few decades in order to > > improve the profit margins of corporations. > > In U.S. law, copyright was actually codified in our *constitution* in > section 8, clause 8. That was passed just a we bit more than a few decades > ago. It's Title 17 of the United States Code, passed in 1947, and completely revised in 1976. The stuff in the constitution is so vague as to be almost meaningless, and certainly has no bearing on modern copyright law - which is not intended to "promote ye the Progresse of Science and useful Arts", but rather to profit from them (as of the 1976 revision, iirc). > However, your argument has a lot of problems. First, that which is the case > with U.S. law may not be the case internationally. On this list, we have > always erred on the side of caution, assuming that the requirements in a > license are legally enforceable. Or are you suggesting that we should > special case the GPL? We have only assumed that in cases where it was reasonable to believe it was true. For example, we are presently ignoring SCO's claims. If you want to work on the assumption that you would lose any lawsuit, then you might as well give up and go home, because in the US you can sue anybody for anything and have a chance of winning. > Secondly, there are pending court cases right now in the U.S. alleging > copyright violations from legal papers filed in court cases. Vague, but it doesn't *sound* relevant. > Thirdly, there is legal precedent for restrictions on the distribution of > licenses (which are just a special case of contracts), though usually from a > trade secret point of view. Please provide citations. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I do not believe that any such cases exist which relate to copyright. Trade secrets are an entirely different set of laws, and cannot be used to enforce the notice at the top of the GPL (because it's not a trade secret). > > Thirdly, we are distributing software, not licenses. We wouldn't > > include them at all if we didn't have to; we only accept them because > > forces beyond our control require us to. > > Are you really saying that we have been violating our own Social Contract > for years because we either lack the power to remove the GPL from our > distribution or the will to switch to non-GPL software? > > I find that a rather farfetched notion. What makes you think this is specific to the GPL? It applies to all licenses. > I don't see anybody forcing us to ship the GPL on our hard disks. I do see > us required to put it there *if we distribute GPL'd software*. But that's > the rub, isn't it? We're only required to distribute those invariant > sections if we distribute the manual. So we're back to removing the GPL by > the same argument that removes FDL documents. This argument is flawed. In the case of FDL documents, we are able to create free documents to replace them which are placed under free licenses. In the case of copyright law, we have no power to create copyright laws which satisfy our notion of freedom. If we could, then none of this would be necessary anyway. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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