Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Anthony Towns writes ("GR Proposal: GFDL statement"):
> Bcc'ed to -project, -legal and -private; followups to -vote please.
>
> It's been six months since the social contract changes that forbid
> non-free documentation went into effect [0], and we're still distributing
> GFDLed stuff in unstable [1]. I think we should get serious about fixing
> that, and as part of that that we should release the following statement
> (or one like it) on the GFDL:
I support this proposal. But, I don't think we go far enough in
disputing the need for a separate documentation licence:
The GPL-incompatibility of the GFDL is a serious problem. While we're
making our point about the GFDL being DFSG-non-free, we should also
point out that while if it were made DFSG-free we would (have to)
accept it, we would strongly prefer that it simply be abolished.
So, I think this section:
> (3) Why does documentation need to be Free Software?
needs to be strengthened. I don't have time right now to write a
suggested text I'm afraid.
Also,
> (4) How can this be fixed?
This section should be clarified and strengthened. In particular, we
should encourage documentation authors to (at the moment) dual-licence
GDFL/GPL. And we should tell the FSF that the Debian project would
prefer the FSF to drop the GFDL entirely.
Also, the summary needs a lot of work. The summary should be good
enough that if you only read the summary you get the main points of
the article. And it should avoid weaselphrases like `there has been a
significant amount of concern' because they just use up space which
would be valuable for putting our position.
I'll try to write something up today or tomorrow.
Ian.
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