Hi,
I hope I'm not the only one who finds it hard to fully understand my
current options in the GFDL GR. In particular, I've become unsure of
what Anthony's proposal is actually saying Debian should do, and of what
the end result of Adeodato's amendment would be. Also, I have found it
difficult to understand what the intent of the proposers is in a larger
context.
These difficulties may be due to English not being my native language,
to my lack of knowledge of previous events, differences in assumptions
or various other factors. In any case, here is my understanding, which I
suspect is flawed:
Anthony's proposal states or infers
* Debian says GFDL is non-DFSG-free
* GFDL material will not be included in main
* The problems with GFDL are "Invariant Sections", "Transparent
Copies" and "Digital Rights Management"
* Each problem alone is enough to make GFDL non-DFSG-free
* FSF could make a new version of the license DFSG-free but hasn't
done so despite four years of negotiation
Adeodato's amendment states or infers
* Debian says GFDL is non-DFSG-free in some modes of use
* GFDL material in these modes of use will not be included in main
* The problems with GFDL are "The DRM Restriction", "Transparent
and Opaque Copies" and "Invariant Sections"
* Only the "Invariant Sections" problem makes the GFDL
non-DFSG-free
* The other problems make GFDL incompatible with some other
licenses, but does not make material with no "Invariant
Sections" non-DFSG-free -- thus Debian continues to include it
in main
Some explicit questions regarding Anthony's proposal:
Does Debian officially end DFSG negotiations with FSF as a result of
this GR proposal? If not, what role or purpose does this GR proposal
have in the context of continued negotiations?
The GR proposal apparently results in useful GFDL-covered material to be
moved to the non-free section. In a previous GR, Debian has reaffirmed
support for non-free. Is it a conscious motive or an accidental
side-effect of this GR proposal to work towards supporting a Debian
system where users can decide for themselves what "level of freeness"
they wish to have, complete DFSG-freeness being the strictest possible
choice? Will the next step be to alter the Social Contract to no longer
say that contrib and non-free are not part of the Debian system (§5)?
Some explicit questions regarding Adeodato's amendment:
It has been claimed that the amendment in fact says "the GFDL is
non-DFSG-free even when Invariant Sections are not used, but we will
include such material in main anyway", contradicting the Social Contract
(§1). Is this true? If not, why does the amendment require a 3:1
majority to pass?
If the Project Secretary does not interpret the amendment in the same
way as the amendment proposer, resulting in a 3:1 majority requirement,
should the proposer be asked to submit an unambiguous version?
The amendment suggests that Debian encourage -- presumably through its
developers -- documentation authors to use another license than the GFDL
(or dual-license). At least one major free software project (KDE) has
stated that a license change is practically impossible. Does the
amendment have any other effect besides asking developers to ask
upstream authors to drop Invariant Sections to avoid their software
being moved to non-free?
Two questions related to the context of this particular GR proposal:
Has Debian explicitly adopted the view that GFDL is completely
non-DFSG-free regardless of its mode of use? If so, which GR(s) has
(have) established this?
Is the document
http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html an official
position statement of the Debian project? If so, which GR(s) has (have)
established this?
Finally, a rhetorical question:
If Debian has explicitly adopted the view that GFDL is completely
non-DFSG-free regardless of its mode of use, but has not adopted the
position statement referenced above as its official position statement,
what is the official position statement of Debian regarding the freeness
of GFDL?
Answer: that's what this GR is about.
Is my answer correct?
I'm looking forward to reading answers and comments to these questions
and notes, and I hope we can clarify the issue and help voters make an
informed decision.
Cheers,
--
Fabian Fagerholm <fabbe@debian.org>
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