Re: GNU FDL 1.2 draft comment summary posted, and RFD
Jeff Licquia <licquia@debian.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-06-14 at 17:52, Walter Landry wrote:
> > Jeff Licquia <licquia@debian.org> wrote:
> > > Regarding your specific concerns: The "at no charge" part was predicated
> > > on an understanding that this was one of three options. You can either
> > > distribute source right then, offer to give them source for the cost
> > > distribution, or provide a pointer to a place to get it free. So your
> > > case should be covered by one of the two alternatives. Ditto for
> > > "non-commercial"; it's hard to run a business with no profit. :-)
> >
> > Well, to get back to the hypothetical schoolkids in Ghana, I doubt
> > that there is any way that they could get anything like that for "no
> > charge". It's not like they can just surf over to www.debian.org to
> > satisfy all of their free content needs. I can get things for "free"
> > because I've already paid for the infrastructure. The infrastructure
> > (including my computer) depreciates every time I use it, so it isn't
> > really free either. It is just that the costs are not directly tied
> > to what I'm getting.
>
> That's not the problem of the distributor. If they handwrite "you can
> get your own copy from http://foo.com/bar"; on the back of the last page,
> they aren't required to give you network access for free to get the
> source. As you say, it's an indirect cost.
What about if I said that you can get it by joining a free software
club, whose membership is "only" $50,000 a year. This is just like
telling a kid from Ghana that they can get free software, but they
only have to pony up their annual salary to join the club of internet
users. It would certainly be an indirect cost (They would offer other
fine free software), but I don't think this is what people are
thinking of when discussing free documentation or software.
Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu
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