Re: Interpreting the GFDL GR

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> wrote:
> Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> wrote:
> 
> >> Read in English, naturally by a native speaker, the license clearly
> >> applies restrictions against "chmod", etc, and the above
> >> interpretation does not come from the license.
> >
> > I agree on both counts. Yet rather than taking the GR to mean that
> > restrictions against chmod are OK in general, I think the GR says that
> > the GFDL should not be taken to imply restrictions against chmod. If
> > that leads to using an interpretaion that does not come from the
> > license, then so be it - it's a lesser evil than deciding that free
> > software does not need to be chmodable.
> 
> For what it's worth, I voted for Amendment B over the original text
> because I am convinced that no court (at least in my legislation, I have
> not much knowledge of others) would rule that someone has violated the
> license because of chmod or similar - simply because it is the normal
> state in the computer world, even on Windows systems, that stuff is
> not-world readable.  Or in other words because this restriction would
> make the whole license void, and that can't be what the licensor
> intended. 

I could see it being used against a service that provides priority
downloads for a fee.  The problem isn't that a court will rule that
chmod is not allowed.  The problem is that there is a large spectrum
of actions which are not allowed by the license, and you have no way
of knowing what is actually ok to do.

Cheers,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu