Michael Poole wrote:
Marty writes:Invariant sections are perfect example of a restriction that enhances the rights of the author (copyright holder) at the expense of the end user, but does so in a way that promotes sharing of information as opposed to "hoarding."This is a rather curious contention. How do invariant sections (by themselves) promote sharing of information?
By protecting the authors' rights, same as the GPL. You must have missed by main point.
The FSF largely uses them
to preach free software, but others might use them to preach a disagreeable agenda, or one that is illegal to promote in certain jurisdictions. Users in those jurisdictions would be limited in how they can use or distribute the work, simply because the author injected a diatribe that does not pertain to the main body of the work[1].
You can't seriously be proposing that making a license safe for random tyrannies that may randomly censor speech, somehow makes a license more "free." What kind freedom is that? Freedom to be a quisling?
It is rather short-sighted to encourage a significant limitation in freedom because no author has yet abused that limitation.
I'll be disappointed is nobody has come up with a better argument that off-topic invariant sections can restrict "freedom."
Michael Poole [1]- To a first approximation, under the GFDL, invariant sections must be "off-topic" for the work as a whole.