Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Adeodato =?utf-8?B?U2ltw7M=?= <dato@net.com.org.es>
> Right, FSF stuff goes away. OTOH, I feel utterly ashamed each time I
> imagine the possibility of the following conversation taking place:
> =C2=ABHey, fellow free software developer, thanks for writing such a cool
> program and releasing it under the GPL! I also see that you wrote
> excellent manual for it, nice! Uhm, I see it's licensed under
> the GFDL, why? Oh I see, these FSF folks that created the GPL told you
> that the GFDL is a reasonable license for documentation, and you
> fscking trusted them?! Bad move, guy. No unmodifiable sections you
> say? Bah, you know we in Debian care more about legalese than about
> being fair to the rest of the community. [...]
If you explain it that way, you're a bozo and you're unhelpful.
This should not be about "Trust Debian more than the FSF" but
should be about "free software needs free software manuals".
Explain that allowing secured media (when it has no impact on user
freedom), distribution without forced source download or long-term
archiving and easy copying between program and manual are all
useful freedoms.
Would ftpmasters and mirror operators be able to "either include a
machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or
[...] ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible
at the stated location until at least one year after the last time
you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or
retailers) of that edition to the public" anyway? I thought similar
source distribution requirements were a practical problem just now?
Blindly following anyone else's opinion has the potential to cause
problems for you. FSF are pretty good, but I think their goals for
the FDL (to require distribution of the GNU Manifesto and/or manual
sponsor's adverts) are significantly different from free software,
or what many free software supporters would aim for in a manual.
If a similar approach was applied to free software, we could attach
an unremovable debian-policy and sponsor adverts to the debian
release CD/DVD images. Do you see the problems with that?
The security and transparent problems look like bugs more than
conflict over the goals, but they are still problematic.
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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