Comment to FDL
Hello, [I send a copy of this to debian-legal list]
I am sorry to say I find your GNU Free Documentation License draft too
complex.
For example: How can I know what I should do to add two paragrafs of a
FDLed document to my FDLed document? From my first read I understand I
should add a Front Cover invariant section on the back cover, keeping my
title to 5 words and not distributing more than 100 copies. ;-)
I had the idea of FSF working for freedom of redistribution and
modification of documents and not for helping authors to put strange and
complex limits to the documents they do. I thought this was work for
others.
I'll explain what I'm trying to say: In free software the authors that
wanted to make his/her software free, without worrying of anything else
but programming, used GPL. The people or companies who wanted
advertisements or more restrictive conditions on their programs
developed other licenses. (And then the people at Debian had to mess
with legal stuff to see if those licenses could be considered free
software)
Now with documents the FSF is doing the job of that restrictive people
who wants more restrictive conditions on their documents. And I ask:
WHY?
If you still want to do that job for them it is ok, but PLEASE first
develop another simple and really free document license. A license in
which we don't have to use one thounsand option rejections (with no
invariants, no front cover, no back cover, no title...) and still not
being sure if we are doing the right thing.
I would like to see something similar to: Open Content License
http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml but with the trust all of us have from
GNU and FSF.
Should I remember you that most of us don't believe in the intellectual
property? And that what we want is just that if someone uses our work he
will have to give us the same rights to use his/her derived work. I
thought this was the idea and not the acknoledgement of the original
author.
Conclusion:
Please if you are going to continue with this license, develop another
one for the convinced free authors, developers and users, without all
that legal mess, or recomend Open Content License if that license is
legally right.
Thank you,
-----------------------------------------------------
Antonio Arauzo Azofra Ph.D. Student in the
Dept. of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
E.T.S.I.Informatica. University of Granada, Spain(EU)
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