My concerns about GPLv3 process

[Werner Koch]

On Wed, 01 Feb 2006 13:48:03 +0000, MJ Ray said:

> Apart from the bit which is slightly off the current topic, but
> could be relevant for future topics! If I staple a program to a
> dead squirrel and the copyright licence says every copy must be
> linked to a dead squirrel, is it free software?

We have seen similar things in the past.  For example the "GPLed"
version of PGP 2 which had two additional restrictions, one was that
the long text file with the crypto political background must accompany
all distributions of PGP.  Clearly that was non-free but something
which can easily be done with the GFDL.

> Has it stopped? Anyone got an announcement? I missed it.

I am not sure whether there has been an announcement but the GNU Press
project is at least dormant since Opus had to leave the FSF.

> Only for limited purposes, which vary from country to country.
> In general, it's not legal to do so.

For example a book on networks might want to include the OOB-Data text
from glibc.  With 48 lines (w/o the example) it is clearly beyond fair
use.

> So GPL for reference manuals would be fine by you?

According to RMS, reference manuals are useless ;-)


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner