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Re: GNU Free Documentation License v1.3



On Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:08:50 +0000 MJ Ray wrote:

> "Wesley J. Landaker" <wjl@icecavern.net> wrote:
> > On Monday 03 November 2008 10:28:39 Simon Josefsson wrote:
> > > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html
> >
> > According to the FSF FAQ, the main change is that it allows certain 
> > GFDL-licensed wiki's to relicense. It otherwise isn't really any different.
> 
> According to the discussion at
> http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.fsf.europe.discussion/2857
> that's pretty much correct.

A wdiff run between GFDL v1.2 and v1.3 revealed the following
non-cosmetic differences:

 * more forgiving termination rules in Section 9 (following the recent
trend on termination rules for FSF licenses: the phrasing seems to be
borrowed from the corresponding GPLv3 clause)

 * added option to delegate the decision on accepting future versions of
the license to a "proxy" in Section 10 (again, text borrowed from GPLv3)

 * added a whole new Section 11 that allows relicensing under the
CC-by-sa-v3.0 (or later) of invariant-less and cover-text-less GFDL'd
material added on a wiki (or similar collaboration site) before
November 1, 2008 (the relicensing must be done before August 1, 2009)

According to the FAQ (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3-faq.html),
Section 11 was requested by Wikimedia Foundation (do they plan to
relicense large parts of Wikipedia under CC-by-sa ?).
Section 11 is drafted with (IMHO) absurd temporal limits (the two
above-mentioned dates): the FAQ tries to explain the rationale, but I
don't think they provide convincing explanations...
However, Section 11 seems to only grant additional permissions, hence it
should not harm.
The same seems to hold for the other changes.

> The confusing FDL GR should hold for 1.3.
> http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001#amendmenttexta

GR-2006-001 still seems absurd to me...  :-(

Anyway, it somehow states that GFDLv1.2'd works without any Invariant
Sections, Cover Texts, Acknowledgements, or Dedications are suitable
for main.

It probably holds for GFDLv1.3 too, since GFDLv1.3 does not seem to be
any more restrictive than GFDLv1.2.
On the other hand, a nitpicker like me could point out that the winning
option of GR-2006-001 explicitly speaks about the "GNU Free
Documentation License version 1.2" ...

Big disclaimers: IANAL, TINLA, IANADD, TINASOTODP.
In other words, what I said is just my own personal layman's opinion and
I don't speak on behalf of the Debian Project or any other group.

-- 
 On some search engines, searching for my nickname AND
 "nano-documents" may lead you to my website...  
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12  31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4

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