On Mon, Feb 06, 2006 at 07:10:07PM +0200, Yavor Doganov wrote: > On Mon, 06 Feb 2006 16:37:20 +0100, Frank Küster wrote: > > > "Zephaniah E. Hull" <warp@aehallh.com> wrote: > > > >> So, I write a program, nice, big, with a license that says that you can > >> do anything you want with it as long as you keep the copyright > >> statements attached and don't make any changes at all to main.c, none, > >> not for bug fixing, not for feature changes, none at all. > >> > >> Oh, and you are not allowed to delete it or keep it from being linked in > >> either. > >> > >> Would you consider this license free? If so, you're an idiot because > >> it's not even close. > > > > s/main.c/secondary.c/, but that doesn't change the argument, only the > > name, actually. Which is part of GFDL's problem. > > This is not a proper example. Non-modifiability of secondary.c may > obstruct further improvements of the program. This is not the case > with the invariant sections, which do not prevent the manual to be > enhanced. Like the following example: > > #!/usr/bin/make -f > # debian/rules file - for debian/keyring > # Based on sample debian/rules file - for GNU Hello (1.3). > # Copyright 1994,1995 by Ian Jackson. > # Copyright 1998-2003 James Troup > # I hereby give you perpetual unlimited permission to copy, > # modify and relicense this file, provided that you do not remove > # my name from the file itself. (I assert my moral right of > # paternity under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.) > # This file may have to be extensively modified > > Is it free? I am sure it is. > Imagine that it contained "...provided that you do not remove my name > from the file and the statement `Dominación mundial de Debian'"; what > would happen then? You would be still allowed to make whatever > modifications you want to your debian/rules, but it will contain a > personal statement -- no problem at all (except some inconvenience). To my knowledge your name on the copyright statement can not be legally removed with or without the statement in the copyright notice, you can be sued for doing so even if the license makes no mention of it. That makes it an invalid argument. If you add the statement in question, then yes, it _does_ become non-free. Simply because it is only a matter of degrees between that one statement, and a line of code. In addition, Debian has already modified core documents to state that we DO NOT CARE if it is documentation, sound files, picture files, code, or letters to your mother. We consider them to all be equal in the needs for freedom for them to go into main. > As for Zephaniah's first example: if you have to remove everything, > you obviously don't need this documentation and it would be much > better to write a new manual from scratch. Thus you can avoid the > invariant sections. Yes, it would be _better_ to write a new manual from scratch, but that does not change the fact that if you reduce the document to the invariant section the result is a completely non-free document. We will not ship a program with non-free image data. We will not ship a program which is mostly DFSG free but which has one or two C files under a non-free license. The same standard MUST apply to documentation, a document with sections which are non-free should not be shipped in main. If you can give a single example that's not a license file or copyright statement of a program, in main, that has components which you are forbidden to remove or modify, you might convince me, but to my knowledge there are none. And we have declared that a piece of documentation is to be held to the same standard as software. You might believe that we _should_ allow non-modifiable works as long as they don't impact the functionality of the program or document, but that has not been our stance. We don't let people ship hardware in main with non-free images, this has come up. Only in this case we are not allowed to ship only the free components, we can't remove the non-free sections of a GFDL document, and so we have no choice but to not ship it in main. Again, this might or might not be what we _should_ do, but it's too late to change our minds, we already stated that documentation is to be hold to the same standard as software, if you don't like that, then propose an amendment to the DFSG or social contract that says that we only care about sections that impact functionality, and the rest can be non-free. Good luck getting it in, but that's what you're trying to state now, and I firmly believe that the DFSG and the social contract disagree with that point of view at this time. Manoj can correct me if he believe that my reading of them is incorrect. Zephaniah E. Hull. -- 1024D/E65A7801 Zephaniah E. Hull <warp@aehallh.com> 92ED 94E4 B1E6 3624 226D 5727 4453 008B E65A 7801 CCs of replies from mailing lists are requested. If I have trouble installing Linux, something is wrong. Very wrong. -- Linus Torvalds on l-k.
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