On May 10, 2004, at 16:45, Raul Miller wrote:
"A 'Secondary Section' is a named appendix or a front-matter section ofthe Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of thepublishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject(or to related matters) AND CONTAINS NOTHING THAT COULD FALL DIRECTLY WITHIN THAT OVERALL SUBJECT." (emphasis added)So? There's nothing that says that the entire document must be composed of only secondary sections -- and near as I can tell this point you're trying to make would only make sense if the entire document could only be composed of secondary sections.
Let me clarify, then. I'm sorry; I've been far too terse...1) The GFDL says that if I make a derivative work of a document, I must include all the invariant sections (as well as, optionally, add my own).
2) The GFDL says that invariant sections must be secondary sections. (This seems to confuse people; I believe the -legal archives contain an instance where the FSF had a non-secondary invariant section. But this isn't a freeness problem in itself, just a gotcha.)
3) The GFDL says that secondary sections must not fall within the overall subject of the document.
Now, I want to create a derivative work of the GNU Emacs manual to advocate free software (look how great emacs is! only free software can do this! etc.) I have created a derivative work of the emacs manual, so I must include the invariants from the emacs manual. I believe these include several FSF and RMS essays about free software and documentation.
Essays on free software "could fall directly within [the] overall subject" of advocating free software. Section 4(g) and 4(l) says I must include them. Section 1 says I must not ("if a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not allowed to be designated as Invariant.")
This is quite inconsistent, and I think that probably makes the document undistributable. Hence, what I wrote below:
This is the same thing as when a license says "you can't use this code in nuclear power plants"; its "you can't use this text in a essay on freedom."
NOTE: Opinions of emacs expressed above aren't my own. I use vim.