On Mon, Nov 05, 2001 at 12:10:36AM +0000, Sunnanvind wrote: > 2) The GNU FDL doesn't pass the DFSG. This is a minor issue; FDL-stamped > documentation can reside safely in non-free. (But that's weird. And they > aren't there now. So we're obviously doing something wrong.) [N.B.: it's a popular practice on the Debian lists these days to confuse people's personal opinions with official Project dicta, so pay attention -- these are my opinions only and I don't presume to speak for anyone else.] [RMS: sorry to CC you but I was unable to broach these issues with you in person last week as I had hoped. I'll understand if you do not have time to reply.] Or the FSF is. I didn't get to go to Chicago last week to see RMS give a presentation, so I didn't have the opportunity to discuss this subject with him in broad strokes (that is, to determine the guiding principles behind the GNU FDL as distinct from the GPL). Indeed the OPL -- as long as no options are exercised -- strikes me as a license much more congruent with what *I* understand to be the FSF's principles than the FDL is. Some people consider it quite a sport to accuse RMS of one variety of ideological heterodoxy or another, but in my assessment he has been strikingly consistent over the years. So it is likely there are motivations behind the GNU FDL of which I am unaware. That said, even if I understand the whys and wherefores behind the GNU FDL, it doesn't follow that I'll think it's appropriate to Debian, at least in its present form. The limit of 100 on paper copies strikes me as arbitrary and gratuitous, and more importantly, there's nothing stopping an author from marking an entire work as invariant text, or playing aggravating games such as marking only uninteresting text as non-invariant. Such a work would be unacceptable to Debian. My personal stance is that I'm willing to grant immutability to license texts themselves -- at least when tied to a specific work[1] -- but not really anything else. I find it difficult to think of an objective criterion for what kinds of data qua data could be permitted to be immutable, without inviting more arguments that you stand to resolve. (Are hinted fonts data or software? Images? Music? Philosophical texts? White papers on cryptography or compiler design? Software reference manuals? Tutorials? Technical documents liberally sprinkled with asides, commentary, jokes, or even cartoons? What about literate programming languages? What if I use haiku for documentation strings in Emacs LISP, Python, or Perl's POD?) For me, it's simple: immutable != free. Most other stances, IMO, invite ambiguity and flamewars. The bottom line for me is this: Debian's Social Contract focuses our Project on software. The packaging of anything that is not, or is not easily regarded as, software, is of peripheral interest to us as a Project. [1] It's already copyright infringement to alter or remove copyright notices, since respecting authorship is a pillar of the Open Source philosophy, and not unimportant in the Free Software approach, I find restriction on modification of copyright notices and license texts acceptable and congruent with Debian's Social Contract. On the other hand, if we had a package that was a electronic book on software licenses, containing the texts of many licenses, I would not accept the package as free if the *contents* of such a text -- in contrast to the license *on* the text, were held to be immutable. Thus, the part of the GNU GPL that says "Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed" is unproblematic when conjoined with material licensed under the GNU GPL, but *is* a problem in my view when the GPL is regarded as a work in itself. I realize that this perspective may not be 100% compatible with the FSF's feelings about the GNU GPL. I think the FSF does mean for the license text to be immutable any any form, because they don't want "forked" versions of the license causing problems in the community; however I might note that this horse appears to be out of the barn despite their efforts. License proliferation is in fact widely perceived as a potential problem, and detrimental to synergistic forces in Free Software. Certainly the OSI's vigorous approval of various and sundry licenses contributes to this problem; I guess it is their way of justifying their existence. That said, I am not sure the immutability of any software license text qua text is really a practical problem at the moment. -- G. Branden Robinson | Debian GNU/Linux | // // // / / branden@debian.org | EI 'AANIIGOO 'AHOOT'E http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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