Re: Request for suggestions of DFSG-free documentation licences

[Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>]

On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 10:15:06AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> The document author, by placing only *some* parts of the work under
> the GPL, is essentially determining for the recipient what parts they
> will find useful to combine with other parts of the software. Prose
> descriptive parts could be combined into the data, for instance; if
> the license does not allow this, an essential freedom is denied.
> 
> On the other hand, if the author acknowledges that *any* part of the
> work could be useful for some recipient to combine with other parts of
> the work, *even if the author can't conceive of it initially*, then
> the logical thing to do is to license all parts of the work under the
> same terms.
> 
> Further, when parts of a work licensed under GPL are combined into the
> FDL-licensed work, the result is *not redistributable at all*, because
> the GPL says the resulting work must be entirely licensed under GPL,
> which conflicts with the FDL work's license terms.

There are no real solutions except:
* boycotting one of the licenses (easy to tell which one) whenever you have
  the chance to do so (ie, mostly as upstream)
* bashing the FSF until they merge GPL and GFDL

Of course, as a maintainer you usually can't do anything but complain, or
look the other way at contamination incidents.  Which are quite common --
even "foo --help" is likely to be one.  And looking the other way, while
popular, can't be called the most sound advice...

-- 
1KB		// Microsoft corollary to Hanlon's razor:
		//	Never attribute to stupidity what can be
		//	adequately explained by malice.