Re: Anton's amendment

[Anton Zinoviev <anton@lml.bas.bg>]

On Wed, Feb 01, 2006 at 01:22:02AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> 
>         Could some one tell me why including the invariant sections of
>  a GFDL licensed work in main would not require us to modify the DFSG
>  or the social contract?

Unfortunately DFSG are not unambiguous and obviously the people
understand them in various ways.  If we decide that the invariant
sections are free, this will require some of us to change their
interpretations of DFSG.

Because of this ambiguity I realy belive that we need to modify DFSG
in some future GR.

>         Specifically, I am looking at the SC:
> >>  1. Debian will remain 100% free

Yes, Debian must remain 100% free.

>         And the DFSG:
> >>       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.
> 
>         We would need to change the must allow modifications bit, as I
>  see it -- since a license attached to a work must allow modifications
>  to the work, as it is currently stated. (I do not consider the
>  license to be part of the work).

Here are three possible interpretations of "The license must allow
modifications":

FIRST
   The license must allow us to modify the work as we see fit with
possible exception for the license and [list here restrictions we
already accept as free].

SECOND
   The license must give us enough permissions to modify the work in
order to adapt it to various needs or to improve it.

THIRD
   The license must allow as to make some modifications of the work.

Obviously, the third interpretation is too loose and I doubt that
there are Debian developers who accept it.  Nevertheless, it is a
possible interpretation of the current text of DFSG.  For the first
and the second interpretation I can say that there are developers who
accept them.

Anton Zinoviev