Re: Unidentified subject!
Anthony DeRobertis <asd@suespammers.org> writes:
> On Thursday, Sep 18, 2003, at 11:24 US/Eastern, Brian T. Sniffen
> wrote:
>> Also, the requirement to distribute a transparent form appears to
>> violate DFSG 2, since it does not permit "distribution in source
>> code as well as compiled form".
>
> Brian, I'm not sure how that follows. Could you elaborate?
>
> AFAICT, the requirement to distribute in transparent, e.g., source,
> form is quite similar to the requirement from the GPL, version 2,
> which we all consider free (per DFSG 10, if nothing else).
The only problem with transparent versions I'm aware of is that they
way they're defined there may not be any such thing[1]. Fortunately,
the only thing you need a transparent version for (that I saw) is
section 3 (distributing in bulk). The other references to transparent
versions generally have an "if available" caveat. So the upshot, I
guess, is that you can't always distribute a GFDL'd document in bulk.
Clearly enough to make the GFDL non-DFSG-free, but I doubt this is
intentional on the FSF's part.
[1] For example, if you make substantial modifications using a word
processor like lyx or OpenOffice (or ms-word, for that matter) that
doesn't have a human-readable save format, there will not be a
transparent version of the new document.
--
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
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