Re: query from Georg Greve of GNU about Debian's opinion of the FDL

[Barak Pearlmutter <barak@cs.may.ie>]

You know, the fact that "moral rights" might in the future
theoretically be an issue for free software in Europe is not an excuse
for the FSF to promulgate a license that itself has already caused
serious problems to people trying to build community commons free
documents, like that encyclopedia.  I'm simply not following your
logic.

Here is the case against the FDL:

 - it is obviously inappropriate for software
 - the line between documentation and software is very blurry
 - eg in the debian-bug.el example, if the FDL were in use it would be
   to the detriment of free software
   
another case against it:

 - used in the recommended fashion, by innocent people trying to
   build a common free encyclopedia, it has *already* caused serious
   problems

These are telling: the FDL, if used for documentation of free
software, damages the cause of free software; and when used for
non-documentation documents like an encyclopedia has damaged the cause
of free documents.

Conclusion: the FDL is a bad license.

					--Barak.