Re: GFDL
Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> > I value freedom in documentation just as much as I do for programs. I
> > value it so much that I designed the GFDL specifically to induce
> > commercial publishers to publish free documentation.
>
> You don't value the freedom to modify the whole book. You value
> freedom in *documentation*, but you don't value freedom in *books*, it
> seems.
>
> That is entirely correct. I don't believe that political essays ought
> to be free in the same sense as documentation or software, for
> instance. I have stated these views in numerous speeches.
But you don't actually value the freedom of the documentation either,
because you insist that the documentation carry a political message.
Here's the central question, I would really like answered.
Would you reject a similar condition on a piece of software? Suppose
a text editor came with a political essay, and the license said that
any changes to the editor must preserve that it display that essay to
every user, and cannot do anything to materially affect the ability of
users to read the essay.
All our current standards for free software would reject this. At the
very least, because it restricts the thing to continue to be a program
capable of text-display, but there are other reasons too.
But what principled grounds are there for rejecting this, since the
same thing is accepted for documentation? It's not enough to just say
"documentation is different"; the question is what are the
differences, and how do those differences imply a disparity in
treatment.
(After all, C code is different from Scheme, but the mere fact of that
difference isn't enough to warrant different standards.)
Thomas
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