Hi,
I second Adeodato Simó's proposal but at the same time I consider it
still leaves some spaces for the absolutism interpretation which tends
to plague Debian. I consider we should have reasonable space for
"judgment" for many things in life.
Let's consider a documentation written in the SGML and released under
GFDL in which invariant section is claimed but its invariant section is
in commented-out section which contain nothing but list of author name
and their contact e-mail address. This is a really possible case since
people consider putting their e-mail addresses in printable contents
tends to cause headache with spams.
GFDL blah, blah,...
Invariant section being following comment section in SGML
<!--
chapter 1: author1_name name1@isp.dom
chapter 2: author2_name name2@isp.dom
-->
Under literal rule of Adeodato Simó's proposal, above GFDL documentation
can not be in "main" since author forgot to place removal rule for the
content. I consider GFDL documentation with such non-significant
contents should receive the same treatment as the invariant-less GFDL
documentation. Other possible GFDL invariant section which, I consider,
should be permitted is an advertisement clause by the author or
publisher. I see no difference from 4 clause BSD license.
Thus, let me propose an amendment to Adeodato Simó's proposal:
s/include no invariant sections/don't include any significant contents
to prevent our Freedom in invariant sections/ and matching changes to
the text.
So here is my proposal in full text:
-----------------------------------8<-----------------------------------
Debian and the GNU Free Documentation License
=============================================
This is the position of the Debian Project about the GNU Free Documentation
License as published by the Free Software Foundation:
1. We consider that the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2
conflicts with traditional requirements for free software, since it
allows for non-removable, non-modifiable parts to be present in
documents licensed under it. Such parts are commonly referred to as
"invariant sections", and are described in Section 4 of the GFDL.
As modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free
Software Guidelines, this restriction is not acceptable for us, and
we cannot accept in our distribution works that include such
unmodifiable content.
2. At the same time, we also consider that works licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation License that don't include any significant
contents to prevent our Freedom in invariant sections do fully meet
the requirements of the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
This means that works that don't include any significant contents
to prevent our Freedom in Invariant Sections, Cover Texts,
Acknowledgements, and Dedications (or that do, but permission to
remove them is explicitly granted), are suitable for the main
component of our distribution.
3. Despite the above, GFDL'd documentation is still not free of
trouble, even for works with no invariant sections: as an example,
it is incompatible with the major free software licenses, which
means that GFDL'd text can't be incorporated into free programs.
For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license
their works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under the
same terms as the software they refer to, or any of the traditional
free software licenses like the the GPL or the BSD license.
----------------------------------->8-----------------------------------
I understand that this vaguer wording may be considered too lenient by
some people when compered with Adeodato Simó's original proposal. I
trust that we as a group are able to make rational judgment.
This proposal should prevent any GFDL document with invariant section
containing code or useful data to be in "main". This is not the case
with the literal text of Anton Zinoviev's proposal. To me, I could
sympathize with some of his argument but the text of his proposal was
too permissive since it gives blanket approval to GFDL.
Osamu
PS: Excuse me for late proposal.
--
~\^o^/~~~ ~\^.^/~~~ ~\^*^/~~~ ~\^_^/~~~ ~\^+^/~~~ ~\^:^/~~~ ~\^v^/~~~ +++++
Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org> Yokohama Japan, GPG-key: A8061F32
.''`. Debian Reference: post-installation user's guide for non-developers
: :' : http://qref.sf.net and http://people.debian.org/~osamu
`. `' "Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software" --- Social Contract
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