Re: What does GFDL do?

[bts@alum.mit.edu (Brian T. Sniffen)]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     > If the GPL were used, it would have to be accompanied by 6 pages
>     > of additional invariant material.  That is still bigger than the
>     > reference card.  Do you object to the GPL on these grounds?
>
>     There's a critical difference here. The GPL can accompany the
>     reference card. The invariant material must be in the reference card.
>
> I explained months ago, and again last week, why this is not so.

Hunh.  Perhaps, if the DRM and Transparent Format issues are resolved,
the Emacs Manual can go in Contrib with a dependency on the invariant
sections in a separate volume of the document in non-free.  Would that
satisfy your interpretation of the GFDL?

>     A similar issue has come up recently on -devel[2] regarding single files
>     downloaded out of a tarball or a cvs repository. Hopefully it's clear
>     that making the license available by reference is sufficient to allow
>     people to download single files from a cvs repository.
>
> "Making the license available by reference" does not satisfy the GPL.
> The GPL must accompany the GPL-covered materials.  Access to the
> program as a collection of files, in such a way that the user might
> copy just part, is acceptable as long as you do not encourage people
> to copy less than the whole that includes the GPL.

So do you believe that Debian is violating the GPL by not including a
copy of the GPL with each GPL-licensed package, but instead having a
common-licenses directory containing the GPL on every Debian system?

I understand that these are questions with complicated answers, and I
appreciate your efforts to answer them.

-Brian

-- 
Brian T. Sniffen                                        bts@alum.mit.edu
                       http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/