Re: Anton's amendment
On Wed, Feb 01, 2006 at 10:57:35PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >> In this case, I should be able to have the orig.tar.gz contain the
> >> invariant, the diff.gz contain stuff to remove the invariant, and
> >> the .deb not contain it.
> >>
> >> That seems not permitted.
>
> > of course not, any more than it is permitted to remove the license
> > text or the copyright notice(*).
>
> Copyright law covers removal of copyright notices; there is no
> law that prevents removal or modification of sections the author
> decries invariant.
there's no law that specifically states you can't remove a credit or
copyright notice, either - it's just convention AND the fact that you
don't have any right to edit & redistribute except that which is granted
by the license.
so, invariant sections have as much "force of law" as credit or
copyright notices.
> However, not being able to remove things not prohibited by
> copyright law does seem an additional restriction to me.
you're looking at it from the opposite direction. removing anything
prior to copying and redistribution is automatically prohibited by
copyright law. any exception to that blanket prohibition is spelt out in
the license or agreement.
> > as has been said SEVERAL times before, the "patch" to an invariant
> > section does NOT change or remove it. it just adds another
> > invariant section in response to it. you may not claim credit for
> > the work of others OR put your words in their mouths. these are
> > both reasonable and entirely unremarkable restrictions which do not
> > in any way impinge on freedom.
>
> In which case, this is sufficiently different from the patch
> clause permitted in the DFSG for me to think it is not coverred. We
> are at liberty to extend the DFSG to also cover the GFDL licensed
> documents with invariant clauses, but I think it does require us to
> modify or clarify the DFSG.
no, it's not sufficiently different.
with software, it is necessary to actually change or remove the code you
want to patch because code is functional - if you don't change it, the
patch wont work.
documentation, however, is non-functional. you can amend it by simply
adding stuff to it.
and, in any case, we're only talking about SECONDARY sections here, not
about the primary topic(s) of the work - ancillary comments, copyright
and credit notices, political rants, and so on. whether you agree with
what the invariant section is saying or not, you don't have the right to
put other words in the author's mouths. if you disagree with them and
feel strongly enough about it, then leave their words alone and add your
own.
> > (*) yes, i know the loony nutcases like to pretend that they're
> > entirely different magically special cases which can be ignored for
> > the purposes of the DFSG (mostly because even they realise they
> > can't completely ignore their existence without losing what few
> > shreds of credibility they have), but they're seriously
> > reality-challenged.
>
> This paragraph does your argument no credit.
why? because i tell it like it is? and don't let unreasonable zealots
hide behind a flimsy facade of being rational human beings?
craig
ps: do i think GFDL Invariant Sections are a good thing? no, i don't.
it's just that i don't think they're a particularly bad thing. certainly
not bad enough to make GFDL non-free, or even bad enough to get upset
about. very mildly irked, perhaps...but no more.
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> (part time cyborg)
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