Re: License of old GNU Emacs manual
Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> wrote:
(invariant sections)
> why not? we allow it for software, so why not for documentation?
>
> in case it's not obvious what i'm talking about, we (grudgingly) allow
> software which only allows distribution of modifications by patch. this is in
> no way different to adding extra material which modifies or refutes an
> invariant section, or even a patch which changes it after installation.
It's clearly different to the idea of extra material which modifies or
refutes an invariant section, since the user is never exposed to the
code that's been patched out - it's an implementation detail. A GUI
application which included text saying "This software supports
communism" and was under a license that allowed us to add a line saying
"Debian does not necessarily endorse this statement" is clearly very
different to an application which allowed us to patch that line out.
On the other hand, I find the idea of post-installation modification
interesting. I think we'd want to talk to a lawyer first, though.
Preferably several.
> actually, it's just a natural consequence of wanting to protect the logo and
> the trademark from misuse by scumbags -- "scumbags" being defined as anyone
> who would want to misrepresent themselves or whatever they're doing as being
> an official part of the debian project, regardless of whether what they are
> doing is compatible with or contradictory to our aims or not.
We can provide the logo under a free copyright license but fairly strict
trademark license. A restrictive copyright license prevents legitimate
modifications as well, which isn't what we want.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.project@srcf.ucam.org
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