On Wed, Apr 16, 2003 at 08:12:27PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > Anyway, to answer your original question, "GFDL = non-free" is not an > official Debian position simply because we haven't written up a proper > explanation of why, and haven't gone through the GFDL documents in main > to see which ones need removing. Well, I've been too cowardly to raise this issue of late, but given that the temperature of debian-legal has been taken a few times over the past several months, and there seems to be a steady or growing feeling that Invariant Sections are not something we can live with, shall we resolve to move forward on this issue? I propose that we: * draft a comprehensive critique of the GNU FDL 1.2, detailing section-by-section our problems with the license * draft a FAQ regarding why we differ with FSF orthodoxy on this issue * draft a document advising users of the GNU FDL how to add riders to their license terms such that works so licensed are DFSG-free, and pointing out alternative documentation licenses that are also DFSG-free Then: * exhaustively identify works in main and contrib using the GNU FDL[1] * contact[2] the package maintainers and upstream authors of each affected source package, and include pointers to the above documents * post a list of affected packages to debian-devel-announce and/or debian-announce, so that no one is surprised by whatever later actions occur * give people some time to consider and act upon the above contact (some may relicense, some will tell us to go pound sand, others won't reply at all) * remove packages from main and contrib whose licenses have not been brought into compliance with the DFSG This is the stuff of which nasty flamewars and misspelled Slashdot headlines are made, hence my unwillingness to do it, but it is clear to me that letting this issue languish in ambiguity isn't good for us or our users. Either that we feel the GNU FDL is being used in main and contrib in ways that are not DFSG-free, or we don't, and either way we need to get ourselves squarely on the record. I am seeking seconds for this proposal. [1] I don't restrict this to GNU FDL-licensed documents that have Cover Texts or Invariant Sections because previous discussions have indicated that there may be still other problems with the GNU FDL 1.2. I seem to recall someone raising a fairly persuasive critique of section 4K, for instance. Thus, if we're going to nail some theses to the church door, we might as well make sure that they're comprehensive. [2] possibly through a mass bug-filing, but I leave this detail to future determination -- G. Branden Robinson | "To be is to do" -- Plato Debian GNU/Linux | "To do is to be" -- Aristotle branden@debian.org | "Do be do be do" -- Sinatra http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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