Re: The old DFSG-lemma again...

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

Your message seems to start from the premise that the GNU FDL is
unacceptable.  That is a rather controversial assertion, and you gave
no grounds for it.  The only serious objection your message states is
this one:

    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.

That is based on a misunderstanding of the GFDL.  The GFDL says that
invariant sections must cover only topics of how the work relates to
the authors or publishers.  So the shenanigans you describe are not
actually permitted.

But suppose the GPL did permit them: what would that imply?  It would
mean that the license was not a copyleft; non-free modified versions
would be allowed.  That would be unfortunate, but it would not make
the license any worse than the X11 license.

If we imagine a a manual that misuses the GFDL by labeling technical
material as "invariant", that would not be free, and Debian ought to
reject that manual, as would the GNU Project.  But that is no reason
to reject manuals in which the GFDL is used properly.