Re: "Robinson, Nerode and other free beer zealots" was: A possible GFDL compromise
On Sun, Sep 14, 2003 at 11:00:01PM +0900, Fedor Zuev wrote:
> >> There a lot of people in this list, who cares very much
> >> about cost ("Invariant Sections is clearly non-free"), but cares
> >I don't see what that has to do with cost.
> Every requirement to keep a some additional bunch of bits in
> distribution, is, without doubt, about a cost, and only about a
> cost.
Not only. Cost difference (be it financial cost, technical cost, or cost
in effort spent) may be prohibitive. Especially when difference is not
marginal, but rather in order of magnitude.
Example: embedded or palmtop devices with limited amount of memory can
not use software that is legally tied to megabytes of documentation.
As I've already proposed in this list, the solution may be to allow to
unbundle parts of the material, on the condition that a valid link to
previous, complete version is provided.
> Your liberty do not increase even in a inch, when you delete
> it. But someone else's liberty may, sometimes, be reduced by your
> deletion.
That balance is more gradual than you appear to think. There is liberty
to give, and liberty to take away, and liberty to take away liberty. As
I've shown above, liberty to remove material _can_ be essential.
--
Dmitry Borodaenko
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