Re: Is the GNU FDL a DFSG-free license?
On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Joe Wreschnig wrote:
>On Sun, 2003-08-24 at 13:37, Fedor Zuev wrote:
>> On Sat, 23 Aug 2003, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> >This still fails - as a result of the use of invariant sections, I
>> >am unable to use content from one piece of documentation in another
>> >piece of documentation under the same license under certain
>> >circumstances. I'm not aware that this is true of anything we
>> >regard as DFSG Free.
>>
>> License incompatability is not an unusual thing for the free
>> software licenses.
>Reread what he said. He cannot use content from one document in
>another document *under the same license as the first one*. This is
>because the Invariant secondary section in the first document might
>not be secondary in the second document, and so cannot be
>Invariant, and so cannot be used. Nor can any section that is
>attached to the invariant section (that is, any other section in
>the work).
There, IMHO, is a subtle difference between a creating
derivative work, and using a part of work in the completely
unrelated other work. But you, of course, may disagree. I just reply
to the words, and not try to clairvoyant a thoughts.
>For example, say I wanted to use parts of the GCC manual to write a book
>"The History of Free Compilers". The GNU Manifesto is now clearly a
>non-secondary section, since it's obviously immediately related to the
>history of free compilers. So, I can't use any of the GCC manual in
>writing it.
Heh. A very carefully crafted example. One step left or
right and you will not get your example.
But, do you believe that your "History of Free Compilers" is
a "manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document"? GFDL
says:
-----------------------
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other
functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: <...>
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for
free software, because free software needs free documentation:<...>
We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is
instruction or reference.
-----------------------
When you try to apply license outside of its scope you should expect
to receive funny results. GFDL has a very narrow scope. It is bad.
But it is different problem.
>Saying this is a "license incompatibility" is like saying I can't
>integrate Windows source into the Linux kernel because it's a license
>incompatibility. Strictly, it is, but no one would ever call it that
>because the "incompatibility" is so great that we classify Windows as
>non-free and stop caring about it at all.
Yes, exactly. You can't integrate Windows source into the
Linux kernel just because of license incompatibility. Windows source
is also non-free, but this is a different (however related) matter.
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