Re: A concrete proposal
On Fri, Dec 14, 2001 at 09:43:08PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> Sections like the "Distribution" section are very common in software;
> I was assuming that it counted as text incidental to the license. The
> Distribution section is rather more verbose, but it's very common to
> have licenses that require the preservation intact of information
> about how to get the original version of the program from the original
> author.
Sorry for repeating my point, but I realized that this Distribution section
is a much better example of what I wanted to say.
The section is marked Invariant, but by its nature it contains information
that is likely to change. Notice how it contains a URL, and the postal
address of the FSF, and specific filenames in the Emacs distribution.
It also describes the use of anonymous FTP, a protocol that might be
entirely superseded by HTTP in a few decades.
Of course, the FSF itself can make changes to this section when they are
needed. But that doesn't help anyone who has to preserve the section in
a derived manual. The section will have to be preserved even after it is
no longer true.
This problem affects the GPL itself as well, and the last time the FSF
moved it was handled via silent replacement of the license text. I even
wrote the Lintian check for that :-) But the GPL has explicit provisions
that allow such upgrading, which the Emacs manual does not have.
--
Richard Braakman
Will write free software for money.
See http://www.xs4all.nl/~dark/resume.html
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