Re: The debate on Invariant sections (long)
David B Harris said:
> On Sat, 24 May 2003 19:19:50 -0400
> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>> A political essay is (typically) written by certain persons to
>> persuade the public of a certain position. If it is modified, it does
>> not do its job. So it makes sense, socially, to say that these cannot
>> be modified.
>
> Just to nitpick here, the original essay may not do its job either. You
> may wish to "persuade" people to the same view, but you have a
> different audience than the original author targetted.
This brings up an interesting scenario:
I'd like to translate a GNU FDL-licensed document into Elbonian. This is
clearly creating a derived work under US copyright laws.
In order to do this, I must maintain the invariant sections.
These invariant sections (written in English) are unreadable to the
Elbonians.
I could also translate the invariant section to Elbonian, but as "everyone"
knows, a lot gets lost in translation. (For example, there is no Elbonian
word for Free as in Freedom, so I had to translate Free Software as "no-cost
computer instructions") And, of course I mark my translation as invariant,
since it's a political statement...
--Joe
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