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Re: The invariant sections are not forbidden by DFSG



On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 03:41:03PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 09:54:40AM +0100, Frank K?ster wrote:
> > Anton Zinoviev <anton@lml.bas.bg> wrote:
> > >> Imagine that AUCTeX's manual was under GFDL, and I want to distribute
> > >> only file:///usr/share/doc/auctex/HTML/auctex/auctex_11.html (which
> > >> deals with language support) in a documentation bundle about "Optimizing
> > >> TeX workflow for i18n and l10n".
> > >
> > > It is not inconvenient to distribute auctex_11.html together with the
> > > invariant sections.
> > 
> > Of course it is - imagine that my documentation contains parts from 10
> > documents, all under GFDL, all using lots of invariant sections - that
> > would be more than inconvenient.
> 
> the DFSG does not require convenience.  it requires freedom.  lack of
> convenience DOES NOT equate to non-free.

True; however, Frank said "it would be more than inconvenient", which
does not say he thinks that the main problem is lack of convenience
here.

> case in point - it is inconvenient (for both the distributor and the
> user) to distribute modified software in the form of original work +
> patch file. very inconvenient. in fact, a complete PITA, especially for
> the user. yet that is explicitly defined as being free in the DFSG.
> 
> feel free to ignore this fact - it's based in reality and doesn't
> conform to your loony zealot prejudices.

No, I won't, because it's actually a very good argument as to why
invariant sections could be seen as less of a problem: if we allow
unmodifiable-but-patcheable programs, it is not unreasonable to say that
we should allow documents that are (in part) unmodifiable, but to whose
contents you can add protest or whatnot. If you would've remained calm
and have given reasonable arguments such as this one, rather than
throwing mud around as you seem to like to do, maybe we could've had a
conversation.

The only problem I see with this argument is the fact that the GFDL
defines an invariant section as a "secondary section", which it in turn
defines as "a named appendix that or a front-matter section of the
Document (...) contains nothing that could fall directly within [the
document's] overall subject". Hence, if you keep adding invariant
sections, eventually any reasonable definition of "the document's
overall subject" would be whatever all those invariant sections talk
about.

How do you think this should be looked at?

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