On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 21:53:43 +1000, Anthony Towns
<aj@azure.humbug.org.au> said:
I second the GR proposal quoted below.
manoj
> =========================================================================
> Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian
> main ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Context -------
> Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of
> concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether
> it is, in fact, a "free" license. This document attempts to explain
> why Debian's answer is that it is not free enough for the Debian
> distribution.
> It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards
> the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL
> documentation should not be considered "free enough" by
> others. Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation
> in its "non-free" section, which does not have such strict
> requirements.
> This document covers the GFDL version 1.2, which is the most current
> version at the time of writing. Earlier versions of the GFDL have
> similar, related problems.
> What is the GFDL? -----------------
> The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who
> use it as a license for their own documentation and promote it to
> others. Notably, it is also used as Wikipedia's license. The GFDL is
> a "copyleft" license in that modifications to documentation made
> under the GFDL must in turn be released under the GFDL, not some
> more restrictive license.
> How does the GFDL fail to meet Debian's standards for Free
> Software? --------------------------------------------------------------------
> The GFDL conflicts with Debian's traditional requirements for free
> software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon
> below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is
> that it is not possible to include content from GFDL documentation
> directly into free software.
> The major conflicts are:
> Unmodifiable Sections ---------------------
> The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of unmodifiable
> sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from
> the documentation in the future. These are Cover Texts, Dedications,
> Acknowledgements, and Invariant Sections. Modifiability is a
> fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states:
> 3. Derived Works
> The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must
> allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license
> of the original software.
> These components create particular problems in reusing small
> portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included
> also, however large), and in making sure that documentation remains
> accurate and relevant.
> Transparent Copies ------------------
> The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for
> "transparent copies" of documentation (that is, a copy of the
> documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular,
> Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the
> documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or
> that a transparent copy be made available for a year after the
> opaque copies are no longer being distributed.
> For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the
> source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be
> sufficient, and that users need not be forced to obtain the source
> with every copy of the binary they download, but this does not
> satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements.
> Digital Rights Management -------------------------
> The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section
> 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM)
> technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that "You may not use
> technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further
> copying of the copies you make or distribute". This inhibits freedom
> in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as
> distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies
> distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected
> media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a
> transparent copy of the work; and, as written, it also potentially
> disallows encrypting the documentation, or even storing it on a
> system that provides user restrictions or file permissions for the
> documentation.
> Why does documentation need to be Free
> Software? ------------------------------------------------
> The question of "Why does software need free documentation?" has
> been addressed in the past by the Free Software Foundation in the
> essay _Free Software and Free Manuals_ [0].
> [0] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html
> There are a number of obvious differences between programs and
> documentation that often inspire people to ask "why not simply have
> different standards for the two?" For example, books are often
> written by individuals, while programs are written by teams, so
> proper credit for a book might be more important than proper credit
> for a program.
> On the other hand, free software is often written by a single
> person, and free software documentation is often written by a larger
> group of contributors. Even the line between what is documentation
> and what is a program is not always so clear, as content from one is
> often needed in the other (to provide online help, or to provide
> screenshots or interactive tutorials, or to provide a more detailed
> explanation by quoting some of the source code). Similarly, while
> not all programs demonstrate creativity or could be considered
> "works of art", some can, and trying to determine which is the case
> for all the software in Debian would be a distraction from our
> goals.
> In practice, then, particularly for Debian's purposes, documentation
> simply isn't different enough to warrant different standards in the
> freedoms we expect for our users: we still wish to provide source
> code in the same manner as for programs, we still wish to be able to
> modify and update documentation, we still wish to be able to reuse
> portions of documentation elsewhere as conveniently as possible, and
> we still wish to be able to provide our users with exactly the
> documentation they want, without extraneous materials.
> How can this be fixed? ----------------------
> What, then, can documentation authors and others do about this?
> An easy first step documentation authors can take toward resolving
> the problems above is to not include any invariant sections in your
> documentation, since they are not required by the license, but are
> simply an option open to authors.
> Unfortunately this alone is not enough, as other clauses of the GFDL
> render all GFDL documentation unsuitable for Debian. As a
> consequence, other licenses should be investigated; generally it is
> probably simplest to use the same license for the documentation as
> for the software it documents, or for documentation that doesn't
> come with a particular piece of software, to choose either the GNU
> General Public License (for a copyleft license) or one of the BSD or
> MIT licenses (for a non-copyleft license).
> As most GFDL documentation is made available under "the terms of the
> GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version
> published by the Free Software Foundation", the Free Software
> Foundation is able to remedy these problems for a great many works
> by issuing a new version of the license. The problems discussed
> above require relatively minor changes to the GFDL -- allowing
> invariant sections to be removed, allowing transparent copies to be
> made available concurrently, and moderating the restrictions on
> technical measures. Unfortunately, while members of the Debian
> Project have been in contact with the FSF about these concerns since
> 2001, these negotiations have not come to any conclusion to date.
> =========================================================================
> Cheers, aj
--
I just remembered something about a TOAD!
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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