Re: Poll results: User views on the FDL issue
On Thu, Apr 21, 2005 at 12:23:40AM -0700, foo_bar_baz_boo-deb@yahoo.com wrote:
> Sometimes having invariant sections protects a user's right to see the
> author's work as the author intended it to be seen, which is a point I
> made before that you seem to be sidestepping. Is it inconvenient for
> you to consider it?
Debian explicitly considers the ability to modify and reuse a work to be
crucial and fundamental. Are you arguing that the "right" to "see the
author's work as the author intended it to be seen" is more important
than that? (I'll pass on the question of whether such a right exists,
except to note that I've never heard of such a thing.)
> Dude, that's not true. You are making a straw man out of GFDL by saying
> stuff licensed under it "can't be modified at all." The real GFDL is
> not like that. The real GFDL allows for the preservation of the
> integrity of certain important but unrelated special sections of the
> document that have some sort of political importance or benefit to Free
> Software as a whole. It does not cause something to be put into a state
> where it "can't be modified at all."
DFSG#4 does not say "... must allow modifications and derived works to select
parts of the work". Free works don't get to pick and choose which parts I
get to modify (the only exceptions are narrow and made explicit in the DFSG).
A license for a program with hundreds of source files, allowing modifications
to all but one, and requires a $100 payment to remove or modify the one, is
non-free; the relative size is irrelevant. It's non-free even if that file
happens to implement the charity notifications in Vim, or any other good,
noble cause.
> 2) We have shown how invariant sections can prevent the supression of
> unpopular views or opinions that the software or documentation's author
> finds are important for users to see. This really should not be
> construed as utter failure to prove that there is potential merit to
> allowing the use of these restrictions in some fashion, so please quit
> saying we failed when we really haven't.
You havn't shown how "preventing the suppression of unpopular views or
opinions" is a goal important enough to abandon the ability to modify,
maintain and reuse works.
--
Glenn Maynard
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