Re: GFDL freedoms
Thibaut VARENE wrote:
> That's what I call favorizing the minority over the majority.
I acknowledge the context of this remark, but I ask you
to remember the trouble that the other view can cause when
generalised and majority takes all, regardless of minority.
Compromise is only possible when the basic aims of two groups are
not in conflict. On the GNU FDL, we seem to have an obvious
conflict between requiring all distributors to include an
unmodified GNU Manifesto (or similar document) in the built
edition of the work and the Debian Free Software Guidelines
about Source Code, Derived Works and Integrity of The Author's
Source Code. There might be another conflict between the DRM
provisions and various other DFSGs, and others I'm less clear
about right now (I found one killer now, so I stopped looking
so closely). It is not easy or fun for debian to change the DFSG
and FSF may not wish to give up their power as copyright-holder
to promote their manifesto. Is total compromise possible?
For what it's worth, I disagree with the assertion that
documentation cannot be software and will speak out against
it. If we accept that source code can be software and text
can be source code, then text can be software. We also know
that documentation can be text. Therefore, documentation can
be software. I've yet to see such a simple disproof in the
other direction. Even without it, I would suggest that we
should require documentation to follow the same guidelines
as programs, because a lot of the motivations are the same.
I sympathise with the view that there are a lot of side issues
to this discussion. When we were expecting FSF to consult, it
was good to try to enumerate as many of these as possible. It
may be better to focus on the most obvious and agreeable killer
reason now and build consensus around a statement about only
that.
--
MJR/slef
http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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