Re: GNU FDL 1.2 draft comment summary posted, and RFD

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Jeff Licquia <licquia@debian.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-06-17 at 13:28, Walter Landry wrote:
> > Jeff Licquia <licquia@debian.org> wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2002-06-16 at 21:29, Walter Landry wrote:
> > > > Jeff Licquia <licquia@debian.org> wrote:
> > > > > 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.
> > > 
> > > Of course, they could get access to all that software much more easily
> > > by asking their rich friend who has already joined the Official Ghanian
> > > Internet Club to download it for them, right?
> > 
> > They don't have a rich friend.  All they have is a Peace Corps
> > volunteer who printed out a bunch of copies when he was back in the
> > US.  And he's not returning any time soon.
> 
> <shrug> Sucks to be them, I suppose.

The problem is not that the kids can't get the source, it is that the
Peace Corps volunteer can't give them paper copies.  The volunteer
can't satisfy all of the conditions on distribution.

> This is getting more and more into the realm of "let's find the weirdest
> corner case we can find, and object based on that".  Weird corner cases
> are bad for influencing the design of something; you end up needlessly
> complexifying things for the 99.99% of people out there not covered by
> the corner case, and in the 0.01% case, you can usually find some
> solution to the problem somewhere.
> 
> Life isn't perfect; we shouldn't worry about trying to make our licenses
> perfect.

All that I was suggesting was to change "no charge" to "a charge no
more than the cost of physically performing source distribution" and
to keep in the non-commercial distribution restriction.  The kids in
Ghana still won't get the source, but at least they can get paper
copies.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org