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Re: GR: Alternative editorial changes to the SC



On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 06:53:42PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 03:03:27PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 19, 2004 at 03:55:48PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > > The policy decision's at http://people.debian.org/~ajt/sarge_rc_policy.txt:
> > > > ] Code in main and contrib must meet the DFSG, both in .debs and
> > > > ] in the source (including the .orig.tar.gz)
> > > > ]
> > > > ] Documentation in main and contrib must be freely distributable,
> > > > ] and wherever possible should be under a DFSG-free license. This
> > > > ] will likely become a requirement post-sarge.
> > > Huh ? Does this mean that we can move the ocaml-docs package to main
> > > again ? 
> > 
> > If it's GFDLed, or under a similar license, you can -- it's maintainer's
> 
> Ah, i don't believe so. The copyright says : 
> 
>     * Any translation or derivative work of the Objective Caml documentation
>       and user's manual must be approved by the authors in writing before
>       distribution.
> 
> I believe this is way more restrictive and non-free than the GFDL,
> altough it would be the same as the GFDL with invariant sections, isn't
> it ? 

No, for at least two reasons:

1)  The GNU FDL has lots of terms in it.  It discusses copying in
quantity, has a clause that is relevant to DRM and encryption
technology, and so forth.  The above clause you cited, alone, doesn't
touch on this sort of thing, so if the rest of the license doesn't
either there's no way this makes the license anything like the GNU FDL.

2) The GNU FDL has no explicit provision for requiring approval by the
copyright holder of any modifications.  Sections are either invariant or
freely modifiable -- at least up to the point where a non-secondary
section is added that brings an existing invariant section within the
scope of the work, at which point you're basically stuck.

Please see <http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html>
for a detailed analysis of many of the GNU FDL's problems.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |    To Republicans, limited government
Debian GNU/Linux                   |    means not assisting people they
branden@debian.org                 |    would sooner see shoveled into mass
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |    graves.          -- Kenneth R. Kahn

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