Re: GFDL v2 draft 1 analysis [long]
On Fri, Dec 08, 2006 at 05:36:05PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote:
>> GNU Free Documentation License
>> Discussion Draft 1 of Version 2, 25 September 2006
>> A "Transparent" copy of the Work means a machine-readable copy,
>> represented in a format whose specification is available to the
>> general public, that is suitable for revision straightforwardly by
>> generic editors appropriate to the medium (text, sound, video,
>> etc.), and that is suitable (perhaps through programmed format
>> conversion) for input to a wide variety of programs for processing
>> that medium.
> :::: Improvable: still suboptimal definition of "Transparent" copy
> The definition of "Transparent" copy is improved with respect to
> GFDL 1.2, but it's still suboptimal, IMO. In some cases, we could
> end up in a situation where no "Transparent" version of the work
> exist anymore (for instance, after modifying the work with a
> proprietary word processor that saves in a closed-spec format): at
> that point it would become impossible to comply with the requirement
> of section 3. (COPYING IN QUANTITY).
I think this is entirely done on purpose, to avoid establishing a
"tax" to edition of the document: anybody wishing to modify it having
to acquire the proprietary word processor - and the OS it runs on -
and to agree to their despicable, hated licences. ("despicable and
hated licences" are words I put in the mouth of the drafters of the
GFDL, not an expression of my judgement.)
So they somehow require that the work be editable with free tools by
requiring it be available in an "open" format. To speak in Debian
terms, they want the copyleft to be so strong that the work cannot
fall from "main" to "contrib", which the GPL-copyleft allows as far as
I remember.
--
Lionel
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