Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> If you are willing to disregard the meaning of some of the words in
> the DFSG in order to reinterpret it, there is more than one way to do
> so.
The US constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means.
Likewise, the DFSG means what Debian developers - especially those on
debian-legal - say it means.
> There is more than one way to generalize the concept of free software
> to deal with documentation. I think the right way is to go back to
> the basic four freedoms, and then consider what they should mean for
> documentation.
I personally think of free software in two directions: what it takes for
a community to create it, and what it takes to make it distributable and
usable by everyone. The first part is violated by the GFDL: not only can
sections be added that can't be changed by later documenters, it makes
sure those sections are likely to be contentious.
> They are relevant if you would like to use the many manuals
> that are released under the GFDL.
I want to use POV-Ray; does that mean that we should make its license
free? What about qmail?
> It's not an issue of giving special consideration to the FSF, or to
> anyone else. It's an issue of what could be useful for Debian.
Yes, it could be very useful to throw the DFSG out the windows; but
we've decided not to do that.
Section 3: Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them
to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
Section 4: Integrity of The Author's Source Code
The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form _only_ if
[patch clause]. (This is a compromise. The Debian group encourages all authors not to
restrict any files, source or binary, from being modified.)
> Section 3 is rather general, and doesn't directly address this issue.
> The statement in section 4, because it only "encourages", clearly
> shows this is not a requirement. I take it to mean that people are
> urged not to use licenses like TeX's license.
"The license must allow modifications" doesn't address this issue? Either
it means that you must allow all modifications, or it means you can say
"you can only modify the config file" and be fine. Reading section 3 & 4
as a whole seems completely clear; section 4 is the _only_ exception to
modifiablity, and even that's discouraged.
I also see section 5 & 6 - Discrimination - violations here, as an
invariant section can make a document unusable for people with the
wrong opinions or who want to distribute to people of the wrong
opinions. I don't think that's a canonical reading, but it goes to the
heart of why I find the GFDL not free software.
This is not merely an argument over the DFSG; invariant clauses also
clash with the concept of free software, as many of us understand it.
I might argue that Debian should carry certain non-modifable material
like the GNU manifesto and other historical or philosophical texts;
but not embedded in documentation, which should be free to change,
just like free software.
--
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