FDL again, was: My concerns about GPLv3 process

[simo]

On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 21:03 +0100, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    > None of what Alessandro described is harmful, it is explcitly
>    > allowed by the license.  You are claiming that there are problems
>    > when there are none, it is like having people claiming that the
>    > GPL has problems by disallowing a GPLed project being converted
>    > into a non-free program.
> 
>    I must say the analogy is completely wrong, and, I'm sorry, almost
>    specious here.
> 
> Care to explain why?

Because you can't make a GPLed program non free against the authors
will.
Instead with the GFDL you can add a very nasty invariant section against
the original authors will, and against the sprit of the work and he will
not be able to remove that section if he wish to reuse the material in a
new edition made by himself. I think this is not the sort of "freedom" a
copyleft license should allow, even for documentation which I think is
different from Software.
I rather see using only verbatim copy licenses or GPL licenses for new
works until these GFDL bugs get fixed.

>    > In theory, anyone can go and make Linux a non-free program, since
>    > it is simply impossible to enforce the license there.
> 
>    In practice I think this shows up to be false, otherwise it would
>    have already happened, don't you think SCO would have already done
>    that otherwise for example ?
> 
> It has happened, and it is continuing to happen.  Usually it is easily
> solved though.

It is easy to solve just because you do not need to gather all the
developers of Linux to sue someone on the use of Linux.
You just need someone that have enough copyright on Linux in key parts
of it, that it makes it impossible to use that kernel without the work
of the person who is suing.
But others have already explained this point very well, and more than
theory real facts shows that.


Simo.