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Re: The debate on Invariant sections (long)



RMS,

There are a few questions from previous mails that I consider important,
which you elided from your replies.  I am intensely interested in your
answers to these questions, and I would greatly appreciate it if you
could take some time to answer them.

Your answers to my other questions have been, for the most part, quite
elucidating.  Thank you.

[RMS:]
> I thought about the ethics of this issue long ago, and decided that
> invariant sections are legitimate.

Where is your ethical analysis articulated?  It would be particularly
helpful if you would explain if and why the arguments presented in

  http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

do not apply to documentation as they do to software.

[RMS:]
> We want to encourage widespread use of the FDL for two reasons:
>
> 1. It leads to a pool of text that can be copied between manuals.
>
> 2. It is (or at least ought to be) good for helping commercial
> publishers succeed publishing free manuals.

I do not understand how the traditional GNU documentation license,
without their proto-invariant sections, does not achieve either of the
above goals.  Perhaps there are other reasons, not enumerated above,
that you would like to see the GNU FDL widely adopted?

> Those are our goals for wanting the GNU FDL to be widely used, but
> those are not our only goals in choosing licenses for our manuals.

What are the other goals?

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |    It was a typical net.exercise -- a
Debian GNU/Linux                   |    screaming mob pounding on a greasy
branden@debian.org                 |    spot on the pavement, where used to
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |    lie the carcass of a dead horse.

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