Re: The draft Position statement on the GFDL

[Glenn Maynard <g_deb@zewt.org>]

On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 10:27:25PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote:
> > > In another reading, the license must allow some modifications and derived
> > > works to be distributed, and §4 is an additional constraint.
> 
> On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 07:31:36PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> > I don't think this is a useful interpretation.  "The only modification
> > which may be distributed is changes in indentation" would pass, or even
> > "the only modification allowed is the null modification".
> 
> That conflicts with §4.

If #3 is interpreted as you suggest above, I don't see how it's a meaningful
clause at all.  Except for "under the same terms as the license of the
original software", #3 becomes a complete subset of #4.  Allowing "some
modifications" is a useless no-op.

Of course, the clause headers make the difference between #3 and #4 clear: #3
talks about Derived Works, and #4 about Integrity of The Author's Source
Code.  I think the "must allow *some* derived works" interpretation doesn't
work at all with #4, and as the fundamental requirements for derived works
are laid out in #3, I don't think there's any ambiguity.

(However, I'm sure there's a lot of ambiguity in my paragraphs above.
Hopefully that made some sense.  :)

-- 
Glenn Maynard