Re: GFDL'ed documents with Front Cover text
Steve M. Robbins <steven.robbins@videotron.ca>
> I have approached the GMP developers both on the GMP list and
> privately. It turns out that the copyright is assigned to FSF so they
> have no authority (or so they claim) to change the license. I was
> advised to contact FSF about it.
Please ask them what assignment they signed. The standard one in
http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/gnulib/gnulib/doc/Copyright/assign.manual?rev=1.1&view=auto
contains the clause:
Upon thirty days' prior written notice, the Foundation agrees to
grant me non-exclusive rights to use the Work as I see fit;
which I think will let them release under any licence they choose.
Even better, it looks like any *one* assigner can get those rights,
rather than needing to hunt all assigners down. Maybe I misread.
I'll only know once someone tries.
> I'll bet that this is not the only documentation copyrighted by FSF
> and licensed under the GFDL with only short cover texts standing in
> the way of Debian's acceptance. If so, I expect it will be more
> efficient if we can approach the FSF for a blanket license change. I
> also expect that some readers of debian-legal have a contact or two
> within the FSF. I imagine that writing directly to someone would be
> more effective than an email to licensing@fsf.org. Perhaps someone
> who's been there could offer tips on who and how to approach this?
I don't think there's much hope of a prompt change from the FSF,
who no longer seem interested in free software manuals. Many friends
of FSF have requested that FDL be debugged at least, but it's not
going to happen for months yet, if ever.
It seems to be far more effective to contact authors directly and
explain the situation: we would like free software manuals and
FSF is moving towards more and more FDL-adware, including requiring
new projects at Savannah and Gna to allow adware copies of their
manuals.
> While I don't mind writing the emails to pursue this, I don't really
> feel I'm best qualified to articulate the nuances of Debian's position
> on the matter. Perhaps one of the debian-legal readers would prefer
> to take up the charge?
I don't think most -legal readers understand debian's position on FDL
any more. It's rather different to the usual freedoms.
Hope that helps,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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