Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Anton Zinoviev <anton@lml.bas.bg> writes:
> On Tue, Feb 07, 2006 at 03:33:10PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> So I don't understand what you're trying to get at, or what possible
>> relevance this theoretical discussion could have to anything else we're
>> talking about.
> If we have many documents covered under GFDL and all of them contain
> different invariant sections, it might be impractical to combine all
> of them into a new document. This was used as an evidence that GFDL
> is a non-free license.
Oh, well, I don't think that argument comes close to flying. The problem
isn't about creating combined documents; licenses don't have to allow that
to be DFSG-free.
The problem with the GFDL with invariant sections is very, very simple: it
doesn't allow modifications of portions of the work. Either people
consider that non-free or not. People who don't consider that non-free
are probably not going to be persuaded by any other, more subtle argument
either, as disagreement about that is basic disagreement about the
interpretation of the DFSG. Personally, I consider the non-freeness of
invariant sections blazingly obvious, but at this point we may as well
just have a vote on it. Either I'm right, in which case the result of the
vote will be overwhelming, or I'm missing something, in which case it will
be closer.
The problems with the GFDL without invariant sections are considerably
more subtle and complex, and (at least in my opinion) much more open to
interpretation.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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