Re: Amendment: GFDL is compatible with DFSG
On Sunday 22 January 2006 16:45, Anton Zinoviev wrote:
> > In fact, the license says only this:
> >
> > You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the
> > reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute
Did any of you actually *read* this? Read it.
What it actually *says*, means that storing a copy on a multiuser machine with
UNIX permissions set so that it can't be read by everyone is *prohibited*.
The permissions are clearly a "technical measure". They clearly obstruct and
control the reading or further copying of that copy.
> > It is not supposed to refer the use of encryption or file access
> > control on your own copy.
And yet it does, clearly, refer to that. This is what we call "bad drafting".
We have repeatedly asked the FSF to revise the GFDL to fix this drafting
error. They have refused. (Note that if it only applied to "copies you
distribute", it would be fine and free. The problem is that it explicitly
applies to copies you make and do not distribute.)
When a license clearly says one thing, we do not say "Well, it's OK because
they probably didn't really mean it." Doing this is OK if we actually have
the written, explicit agreement of the copyright holder that s/he didn't
really mean it. But it is not a reasonable thing to do for a license applied
by many disparate copyright holders, or indeed one where the license author
refuses to fix an obvious drafting error. Both are the case for the GFDL.
A vote for Anton's GR is a vote to ignore the actual text of licenses entirely
when determining DFSG-freeness, in favor of some nebulous guess as to what we
think the license is supposed to mean. Trust me, if it passes, I will use
the same argument to get xsnow into main, since the author probably didn't
intend to restrict modification.
--
Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com>
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