Re: PROPOSED: interpretive guidelines regarding DFSG 3, modifiability, and invariant text
On 27-Nov-01, 14:53 (CST), Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2001 at 06:59:57PM +0000, M. Drew Streib wrote:
> > The intent, although IMO abusable, is to give the author a chance to make
> > a statement, but continue to allow derivative works of all the actual
> > relevant material. This is seen in a small degree in the GPL itself,
> > which requires a copy of itself to be included in GPL'd works, and itself
> > includes a preamble of text that we might term 'invariant' by FDL terms.
>
> Yes, I'm aware of that. Given that it is fairly small, and I happen to
> be philosophically sympathetic to it, I don't have a big problem with
> such material.
Hmm. The uncompressed GPL2 is 18k (at least in my
/usr/share/common-licenses; YMMV). There are many programs covered by
the GPL2 whose source code isn't even 18k, much less 360k (20*18k).
So these done meet either of Branden's quantitative measurements. Do we
throw them out?
Obviously not. But this is the kind of problem one has when trying to
quantify what is basically an issue for qualitative judgement. Branden,
I agree that the FDL is possibly subject to abuse, but I don't think
this is the right approach. Yes, it might avoid the 'but you let in foo'
wars, but it's wide open to "but it's only 37 bytes over the limit"
wars.
Steve
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