Re: Gnus Manual License
В Thu, 05 Oct 2006 18:41:05 -0400, Hubert Chan написа:
> On Thu, 05 Oct 2006 15:54:05 +0200, Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> said:
>> I believe the license clause is annoying, but, as for OpenSSL, does
>> not make it impossible to use the licensed material freely, and in
>> particular, should not prevent including it in main.
>
> Yes, I agree that it is annoying. I think that RMS also thought it was
> annoying, which makes me wonder why he doesn't mind invariant sections
> in documentation. I'm sure he's answered that question before, so if
> someone has a pointer to where I can look that up, I'd be interested.
To better understand the reasoning, I suggest you to read/listen one
of RMS' speeches "Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer
Networks"; they're linked from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ under
the section "Speeches and Interviews".
To summarize: Documentation is a "functional work" and thus in order
to be free we must have the right to modify it. "Invariant Sections"
are "aesthetic works", not connected with the technical matter that
the manual is about, and represent ethical/political/whatever opinions
of the authors. It won't be useful to modify The GNU Manifesto or
THE-GNU-PROJECT and turn these things into something completely
different.
Note that during the last GFDL discussion on -vote (prior to the GR)
Anton Zinoviev and I contacted RMS about some clarifications. He
believes that a manual might be non-free for someone, if it contains a
long enough list with lots of invariant sections, or sections that
contain abusive material. That doesn't make the license non-free,
though.
A world where "everything is modifiable" would be an absurd one.
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