Re: The debate on Invariant sections (long)

[<joemoore@iegrec.org>]

David B Harris said:
> On Sat, 24 May 2003 19:19:50 -0400
> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>> A political essay is (typically) written by certain persons to
>> persuade the public of a certain position.  If it is modified, it does
>> not do its job.  So it makes sense, socially, to say that these cannot
>> be modified.
>
> Just to nitpick here, the original essay may not do its job either. You
> may wish to "persuade" people to the same view, but you have a
> different audience than the original author targetted.

This brings up an interesting scenario:

I'd like to translate a GNU FDL-licensed document into Elbonian.  This is
clearly creating a derived work under US copyright laws.

In order to do this, I must maintain the invariant sections.
These invariant sections (written in English) are unreadable to the
Elbonians.
I could also translate the invariant section to Elbonian, but as "everyone"
knows, a lot gets lost in translation.  (For example, there is no Elbonian
word for Free as in Freedom, so I had to translate Free Software as "no-cost
computer instructions")  And, of course I mark my translation as invariant,
since it's a political statement...

--Joe