Re: The draft Position statement on the GFDL
Scripsit Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>
> On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 05:23:21PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
> > Nothing prevents them from doing so. That, however, does not affect
> > the *fact* that, for whatever reasons, they do not *actually* do
> > so. Hence a claim that they do is *factually incorrect*.
> I'm very dubious about this concept.
The concept of being factually incorrect?
> It's generally true that not a lot of money is made off of hypothetical
> projects. It's also generally true that when people talk about making
> money, they are talking about making money over a period of time, not at
> some instant in time. Also, making money involves more than just sales
> (it involves promotion, and production, and so on).
I fail to se how this paragraph has anything to do with my point.
> You've proposed a license for a work [which I've never seen, so have
> not examined] makes some claim about making money, and that you have a
> hypothetical derivative work where that claim would be false.
You are still not making any sense. It is completely and utterly
irrelevant that the cover text I mention speak about "making money",
except in the sense that one needs to look at its meaning to see that
it would become factually incorrect for a derived work.
> That said, for the cases I can imagine involving such work -- if I
> cared about it at all -- it would be easy enough to add a statement of
> the form "while the free software foundation made money from earlier
> editions to this work, I don't think they will be making any money from
> this edition for some time."
That is a non-solution. Telling a lie and then saying, "oops, the
above statement is a lie, but a previous author requires me to tell
it" will (1) not make the lie go away, (2) help nobody, and (3) make
everyone involved look silly. Plus, there may not be space for that
much deliberation on the cover.
> Your hypothetical "factual incorrectness" is purely contextual,
Yes. So?
> and it's probably possible to fix the context that the statement is
> no longer incorrect.
Sure - by not making a derived work at all. That is the only way to
avoid putting the cover text in a context where it is not literally
false.
> Then again, if your primary concern is not "presenting the facts clearly",
> but "expressing righteous indignation", I can see why you wouldn't like
> this approach.
(copy and paste) I do not se what this paragraph has to do with
anything I wrote.
--
Henning Makholm "I have seen men with a *fraction* of
your trauma pray to their deity for death's
release. And when death doesn't arrive immediately,
they reject their deity and begin to beg to another."
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