Re: query from Georg Greve of GNU about Debian's opinion of the F DL
Georg C. F. Greve <greve@gnu.org> wrote:
> || On Tue, 15 Apr 2003 09:31:26 -0400
> || Peter S Galbraith <psg@debian.org> wrote:
>
> psg> It doesn't perserve freedom at all. It grants any redistributor
> psg> the right to add unremovable rants to the loss of the user's
> psg> freedom.
>
> So you are afraid of somebody adding a part that you don't like and
> making it invariant?
Absolutely. See my previous reply. Releasing software under the GPL
assures me that I can merge in derived works from other contributors
back into my original work. Using the GFDL means I might not be able to
do that without being forced to add useless crap along with it. The GPL
protects the original author and the end user from the abuses of
redistributors; the GFDL allows these abuses.
> I'm sorry, but if somebody wrote something into a document that was
> important to him and you didn't like it and removed it to distribute
> that as a newer version of the document, you'd be violating that
> persons Copyright. GNU Free Documentation License or no.
No if it were released under the GPL. Compare to:
"I'm sorry, but if somebody wrote something into SOFTWARE that was
important to him and you didn't like it and removed it to distribute
that as a newer version of the SOFTWARE, you'd be violating that
persons Copyright."
Care to defend that again?
> psg> There you go again. It's not about disk space. It's about
> psg> freedom.
>
> Exactly.
>
> That is why I didn't accept the technical idea that it wasn't possible
> to ship the whole document with the GUI that wishes to display parts
> of it or the necessity to hard-code parts of the document into the
> program.
Imposing technical limitations is non-free.
> psg> Do you really represent the FSF?
>
> Yes.
>
> psg> Do they know how you really feel about these issues?
>
> I would think so.
Well, I'm sorry to say I no longer feel that freedom is safe in the
hands of the FSF. I will rethink future copyright assignments to the
FSF.
--
Peter S. Galbraith, Debian Developer <psg@debian.org>
http://people.debian.org/~psg
GPG key 1024/D2A913A1 - 97CE 866F F579 96EE 6E68 8170 35FF 799E
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