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Re: The draft Position statement on the GFDL



On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 08:24:36AM -0400, Raul Miller wrote:
> > And I explained that your logic only applied to the parts which
> > were not licensed under the GPL -- not to the parts that are.

On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 05:02:58PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> Your counterargument doesn't make sense.
>
> DFSG#3 requires that "The license must allow modifications and derived
> works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the
> license of the original software."
> 
> Derived works which are under the same terms as the original software must
> be distributable.

[1] When GPL'd code is contained in a larger work, the GPL will not
allow distribution of the GPLed code if the larger work has some other
restrictions.

[2] When you distribute GPL'd code, you must distribute the GPL license
text with the code and you are not allowed to distribute modified copies
of that license.

> If you combine gcc (GPL) with libsecret.so (GPL-incompatible), the result
> is a derived work which is not under the same terms as the license of
> the original software, which is a case DFSG#3 explicitly doesn't care about.

If you distribute that work, you then lose the right to distribute GPLed
code even without libsecret.so.

Or, more simply, you are not allowed to copy or distribute gcc under
the terms of the GPL in this circumstance.

> > Anyways, there's another aspect to the GPL where it imposes a requirement
> > that modification be restricted.  It requires that the license document
> > be provided with the licensed program, and forbids modifications to the
> > license document.
> 
> I've already discussed this at length, in my posts regarding license texts
> vs. license terms.

But we are still required to distribute the license text when we
distribute code under the license terms.

> (And all of this is based on the premise that the DFSG is something other
> than a set of guidelines which d-legal interprets, and it seems to have lost
> all relevance to the original GFDL discussion.

I agree that this is a complete tangent to the GFDL discussion.

> None of this has any bearing on the fact that the GFDL's restrictions
> are not Free;

The GFDL came into discussion because I posted a critic of a document
discussing that license.  At no point did I claim that the GFDL is
free -- instead I was pointing out flaws in some arguments discussing
GFDL problems.

-- 
Raul



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