Re: GFDL Freeness and Cover Texts
On Sat, 3 May 2003, Michael D. Crawford wrote:
> But what if it isn't? Must we only have the black-and-white distinction
> that invariant sections or cover texts are never allowed, or could we
> allow them if they are truthful?
Eek. "Truthful" is hard to define usefully here, and for some statements
the value can change from user to user.
> In my case my only desire is to guarantee that the reader will know
> where the documents came from, so they can look for more or others like
> it.
I don't see how this is different from any software author's desire for a
user to know that she wrote the software and may have more software like
it.
You can require a copyright statment, this is pretty clearly allowed in
free software. You can include text that you request modifiers to leave
in. You can give recipients just a tiny bit of credit that they'd be able
to google you if they want.
Putting the requirement into a license is understandable, but unnecessary
and non-free.
> But I don't expect that my articles could ever get so many revisions by
> so many people who all want their own cover texts, separately from
> mentioning the Linux Quality Database
Why would each author not have similiar motives as you do, and want proper
cover text pointing to their version of the work, and similar writings?
Moreover, would you accept the same argument for software? "This software
is pretty special-purpose, so I don't expect many people to want to modify
it. Therefore, a license which mandates a splash screen be preserved is
ok."
--
Mark Rafn dagon@dagon.net <http://www.dagon.net/>
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