Re: Gnus Manual License
On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:25:52 +0300, Yavor Doganov <yavor@doganov.org> said:
> 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".
Thanks. I'll take a look.
> 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.
And as such, I would expect that they should at least be removable,
which they are not.
> It won't be useful to modify The GNU Manifesto or THE-GNU-PROJECT and
> turn these things into something completely different.
I disagree. I may want to write a "Hubert Manifesto" and use "The GNU
Manifesto" as a starting point. Now whether I should be allowed to do
that is a different matter, but you can't say that it "won't be useful"
to have such permission. It would be extremely useful for me,
especially considering that I'm not a very good writer.
And in a distribution like Debian that claims that every bit is
modifiable (save for license texts, which I think Aj, or someone,
promised we would have a GR to clarify that after etch), such sections
should not be allowed. The only way it should be allowed is to change
the Social Contract and/or DFSG.
> 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
Well, "long enough" is very subjective. And I would not be comfortable
basing freeness on something so subjective.
> contain abusive material. That doesn't make the license non-free,
> though.
> A world where "everything is modifiable" would be an absurd one.
--
Hubert Chan - email & Jabber: hubert@uhoreg.ca - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
PGP/GnuPG key: 1024D/124B61FA (Key available at wwwkeys.pgp.net)
Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7 5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA
Reply to: