Re: The draft Position statement on the GFDL

[Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>]

> >> On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 09:57:41AM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> >>> Now, again, some restrictions on creating derived works are generally
> >>> considered acceptable.  But required inclusion of arbitrary lumps of 
> >>> text
> >>> in a particular manner certainly isn't one of them (even with the
> >>> oft-ignored GFDL restriction that they must be 'off topic').

> > On Sun, May 09, 2004 at 12:41:52PM -0400, Anthony DeRobertis wrote:
> >> The oft-ignored restriction that invarient sections must be off-topic
> >> probably just makes the DFSG 3 problems worse: It also limits derived
> >> works to not covering certain topics (or, at least makes their status
> >> *very* unclear if they do cover those topics).

On May 9, 2004, at 13:53, Raul Miller wrote:
> > Huh?  This would be true if the rules about secondary sections applied
> > to the document as a whole.
> >
> > But they don't.

On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 04:32:36PM -0400, Anthony DeRobertis wrote:
> WTF? Have you read the GFDL?

Yes.

> "A 'Secondary Section' is a named appendix or a front-matter section of 
> the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the 
> publishers 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.

> > You'd havr even worse problems if you tried to include examples from
> > two sources which had incompatible licenses.
> 
> This has nothing to do with incompatible licenses. Both licenses are 
> GFDL. It has to do with the GFDL limiting (unintentionally) what can be 
> the topic of a derivative work.
> 
> 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."

I don't see how that could be true.

Unless, that is, you have the idea that the document must be composed
only of secondary sections and nothing else.

-- 
Raul