Re: The debate on Invariant sections (long)
Peter S Galbraith <GalbraithP@dfo-mpo.gc.ca> writes:
> Jérôme Marant <jmarant@nerim.net> wrote:
>
>> >He believes his invariant sections are an important soapbox for his free
>> >software philosophies. In an apparent contradiction, he feels it's a
>> >small price to pay if that makes the documentation non-free.
>>
>> Could we consider some invariant sections as "non-problematic"?
>
> Well, they interfere greatly with derived works of documents (you can't
> merge in text into a derived work without also including the Invariants)
> whether the derived works are other manuals, a reference card, or
> context-sensitive help in Emacs (a pull-down menu for example).
> How you you create such a pull-down menu?
Do you have to display the invariant section as well. It is legal just
embedding the invariant section without displaying it?
> I'd even argue that distributing Emacs that links into the Info document
> as it does now is not permitted by the Emacs license. It seeems to be a
> combined work with added restrictions beyond what the GPL allows.
Emacs embbeds an info reader and makes possible to browse such documentation.
There is no link in the code AFAIK.
>> >> But then, if we're seeking for enemies, I believe they
>> >> are not on GNU side ...
>> >
>> >I think we should be true to ourselves, in spite of whatever the FSF
>> >say. I think it's unfortunate that not only are they using a non-free
>> >license, but that they are promoting it as a free license.
>>
>> You are right if you considered such documentation as covered
>> by DFSG. This is the point of the debate.
>
> I think it's shortsighted to put documentation onto a pedestal out of
> the reach of software. What happens if I want to merge this
> documentation into software?
I don't know. How do software licenses deal with such a case?
--
Jérôme Marant
http://marant.org
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