Re: query from Georg Greve of GNU about Debian's opinion of the FDL
Georg, continuing to miss the point entirely, wrote:
>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that as a newer version of the document, you'd be violating that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.
Sure. This is true of any copyrighted material -- unless the document was
licenced under a *free* license. Which the GNU FDL *isn't*. Are you
listening? We're saying that to be a *free* document (free as in speech, not
just free as in beer), we must have the right to reuse sections without
having other sections gratuituously dragged along.
The GNU FDL, applied with invariant sections, makes a *non-free* (as in
speech, not as in beer) document. That doesn't make it evil or anything. It
makes it *non-free*. Not everything needs to be free, but it's really
obnoxious for the FDL to call itself "free" when it's so far from free.
Are you speaking for the FSF as an organization? If so, I would like
explicit confirmation of the following:
* The FSF believes there is nothing wrong with GFDL documents containing
invariant sections.
* The FSF is not going to change the GFDL to allow the removal of invariant
sections.
* The FSF is going to continue to promote the usage of the GFDL for software
documentation.
* The FSF is going to continue to promote the usage of invariant sections
with the GFDL.
If we have confirmation of these four things, then we know that there will be
no agreement between Debian and the FSF. Debian can go ahead and put the GNU
Emacs manual, GCC manual, and Glibc manuals in non-free. The only reason
they're not there now is that Debian has been hoping that the FSF will get
the point.
I really hope someone at the FSF will get the point.
--Nathanael Nerode
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