Re: coupling software documentation and political speech in the GFDL
Dylan Thurston <dpt@math.harvard.edu> writes:
> On 2003-09-26, Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com> wrote:
>> The conflict is around the need professed by FSF to hitch political speech
>> to the cart of software documentation, and the fact that Debian, while it
>> may have been designed in part to achive a social or political goal, was
>> designed to deliver software rather than political speech.
>
> Sure, that's a nice analysis. What do you propose to do about it?
> Debian would be quite happy to distribute modifiable political speech
> (with suitable provisions for protecting the author's integrity), but
> the FSF has not shown any interest in considering that possibility;
> and most DDs posting here seem quite firm in the view that
> unmodifiable political speech is not allowed.
Bear in mind that Debian does distribute freely modifiable political
text, for which the original author is *dead*, and yet his original
words are still copied about substantially unchanged: the book of
Amos, for example, in package bible-kjv-text. I think RMS fear that
we would somehow change his essays is severely unfounded.
Additionally, his argument is misleading in ways which prevent
counterargument: there's no way we could change his essays. We might
derive works from his essays, though it is unlikely they would be
noticeably similar to his essays.
-Brian
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