This one time, at band camp, Russ Allbery said: > Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> writes: > > > So, the DFSG are what they say they are -- > > guidelines. However, some licenses were deemed by the project to be > > de-facto free, even if they do contravene some of the guidelines, > > hence explicitly naming the GPL and the bsd licenses. The naming > > them specifically removes the requirement that they meet all the > > guidelines. > > Unfortunately, that does leave us with this vague notion of acceptable > limitations on modification, which I'm not horribly comfortable with. > It's very open to interpretation and feels likely to be an endless source > of argument. But I don't see a way out of that given what the DFSG says > right now. Reading it to imply that the GPL is not otherwise free but is > accepted as a special exception seems as tortured to me as reading it to > say that a license is free provided that *some* modifications are > permitted. This is exactly my point. Not that I think the GFDL is necessarily DFSG free, but that it is not so clearly unfree as has been repeatedly argued. I am not sure we need to either revise hostory or decide we are revising the DFSG to make a decision about the GFDL. > Note that invarient sections in the GFDL are more restrictive than clause > 2c of the GPL in every respect I list above. The exact form of the text > is fixed, the ability to modify the source that produces the invarient > sections is unclear (to me at least) from the license, and the invarient > sections must be retained no matter what the derivative work looks like, > even if only a portion is being excerpted into a space-limited environment > (the infamous coffee mug example). Although I have to note that people are also arguing that since 'any non-source form is an object form', the coffee cup example must either be accompanied by source or a written offer to make that source available for threee years, if the original is licensed under the GPL. That scarcely feels more free, to me. Please note that I do agree with your other arguments on this, at least mostly - the GFDL does provide less freedom than the GPL does overall. I am for the most part concerned that we are avoiding the difficult issues because they are grey areas, and this has led us to the twisted logistical point where people are arguing for either rewriting history or rewriting the DFSG. I don't see either of those as necessary no matter which decision is made about the GFDL. > > Besides, not removing a copyright notification already present > > is a different kettle of fish from invariant sections. > > I'm not sure that I agree with this. So far as I know, there is no legal > requirement that copyright and warranty disclaimers be presented in > interactive programs. They must accompany the work in some legal > jurisdictions, but the GPL goes much farther than that. Agreed. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ,''`. Stephen Gran | | : :' : sgran@debian.org | | `. `' Debian user, admin, and developer | | `- http://www.debian.org | -----------------------------------------------------------------
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