Re: A possible GFDL compromise

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    > The term "heavily affected" is still an exaggeration.  In any case,
    > the effect is simply due to incompatibility.  I posted a long message
    > explaining that this sort of thing is a consequence of the existence
    > of incompatible free licenses.

    No, you've missed the point.

    There is *no* license which is free-for-software which would allow the
    use of such a manual section in isolation.  None.  Because, of course,
    the FSF's definition of free, as applied to software, doesn't allow
    invariant sections.

That's both inaccurate (since it does, in some ways, allow them) and
irrelevant (because we don't apply our definition of free software to
manuals, and Debian may not apply it to anything), but in addition,
this problem doesn't really depend on invariant sections at all.  The
same would be true for a GPL-covered manual, because you can't use
snippets without a copy of the GPL (unless they are fair use).

    However, the point is that the simple license, was always compatible
    with at least one free software license.  For example, one could
    easily distribute software under the simple license itself.

I don't think anyone ever did so.  In practice, the issue is not
significant, since you can distribute the manual along with the
software, and make the software access the manual in whichever way you
want.