Re: query from Georg Greve of GNU about Debian's opinion of the F DL

[James Troup <james@nocrew.org>]

"Georg C. F. Greve" <greve@gnu.org> writes:

> I'm sorry, but if somebody wrote something into a document that was
> important to him and you didn't like it and removed it to distribute
> that as a newer version of the document, you'd be violating that
> persons Copyright. 

Err, what complete BS.  So, to take a (hypothetical) real world
example[1], you're telling me that if the upstream author of the GNU
Privacy Handbook (under the GFDL with no invariant sections or other
options) added a 10Mb rant about how cows were secret leaders of a
world-wide cabal poised to take over the earth RSN, I couldn't remove
it because I'd be violating his copyright?  Pfft.  What rubbish.

Do you really not get that one of the fundamental freedoms (of the
free software community) is the freedom to fork and/or make changes
that the original author is against?  It's not something to be used
hastily or regularly, but it's a fundamental freedom never the less.

Or are you just so caught up in trying to defend the GFDL that you'll
say almost anything to further that cause?

> GNU Free Documentation License or no.

Really... so why is this in the GFDL then?

|    The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other
|    written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone
|    the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  ***************
|    modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily,
     ************
|    this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get
|    credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for
|    modifications made by others.

>  psg> Do you really represent the FSF?
> 
> Yes.
> 
>  psg> Do they know how you really feel about these issues?
> 
> I would think so.

Well, if that's true then it's a real shame because my opinion of the
FSF has fallen to an all time low.

> In my eyes the GFDL is clearly a free license. 

It's reasonably clear to me that there's a good consensus on
debian-legal that GFDL (using invariant sections at least) is not and
you don't seem to be convincing anyone otherwise...

-- 
James

[1] Real world in the sense that I maintain the gnupg-doc package
    which contains the GPH.  Hypothetical in the sense that the
    example's clearly OTT to prove a point.