On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 07:13:30PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > I would not release a reference card under either the GFDL or the GPL, > because both of them are long enough that the requirement to > distribute them along with the reference card is burdensome. > But surely this doesn't imply they are non-free licenses. I've never seen any company print and distribute a single reference card. The costs for doing so highly outweigh the benefits. Usually, what people do is distribute a number of reference cards at once -- say, one for emacs, one for bison, one for gcc, and so on. Given all such manuals would be distributed under the terms of the GPL, one can get away with distributing a single version of the GPL. With the GFDL, you can also distribute a single version of the GFDL itself, but you must also distribute a copy of all of the invariant sections. > With the GFDL'ed reference card, since the "Invariant Section" text is > the majority of the text, I'd be doubtful that it could qualify as > "Secondary" at all: it may be the main topic by sheer volume. So it may > not even be distributable. > > The invariant sections don't define the main topic, because > interpreting them as the main topic is inconsistent with the GFDL's > requirement that they be secondary. That's putting the horse behind the wagon. A secondary section must not be a section about the main topic. However, if there are many secondary sections, in a reference card situation there may be more text in the secondary sections alone than in all other sections combined. One could wonder whether, at that time, they would still fulfill the definition of 'secondary'. You say 'they do not define the main topic, because they are secondary'. However, the statement being made was 'They are no longer secondary, because they define the main topic'. There's a world of difference there. > Further "Invariant Section" problem: I can't use parts of the GCC manual > in an essay on the funding of free software > > For the manual to be free, you must be able to publish a modified > version of the manual. In other words, a modified manual. > > Being able to use some of the text for something of a different kind, > such as an essay about the funding of free software, is something above > and beyond the call of duty for a license. This is our main point of disagreement, I think. -- Wouter Verhelst Debian GNU/Linux -- http://www.debian.org Nederlandstalige Linux-documentatie -- http://nl.linux.org "Stop breathing down my neck." "My breathing is merely a simulation." "So is my neck, stop it anyway!" -- Voyager's EMH versus the Prometheus' EMH, stardate 51462.
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