Re: Unidentified subject!
Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> For example, I might use a manual by tearing it into pieces and using
> the individual pages as confetti for a parade. But I cannot copy
> GFDL'd manuals and then do this.
>
> I congratulate you on your imagination--it never occurred to me to
> think about this as a use of a manual.
>
> As it happens, you are free to do that, because copyright does not
> cover tearing up a manual. You don't need a license to give you
> permission to do that.
No no, I cannot *copy* the manuals and then distribute them this way.
> Yes, there are gray areas where it is hard to decide. I had to think
> for months about whether the TeX license qualified as free, since it
> makes the whole of the original TeX source code invariant. And I had
> to think for weeks about a LaTeX license, that required changing the
> name of any file that you modify. I eventually concluded that LaTeX
> was free despite this requirement, but only because it has a remapping
> feature that lets you say "Use file myfoo.sty when the document asks
> for foo.sty".
We have come to basically exactly the same conclusion about these
cases. The GFDL does not allow for this.
> Debian has a way of answering that question: but our way, which
> involves the DFSG, would say that "send $1 to the author for
> permission to make changes" is wrong for the same reasons that "send
> $1 to the author for permission to make copies", and is wrong for the
> same reason that we think that invariant sections are wrong.
>
> The DFSG doesn't say anything about invariant sections; you're
> assuming a very strict interpretation. You're also assuming that the
> DFSG should be applied to manuals as well as software, and that the
> interpretation should be the same.
The DFSG says that we must have the right to modify everything, at
least by the use of patch files.
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