Documentation vs. Software (Re: Savannah rejects a project because it uses GPL)

MJ Ray mjr at phonecoop.coop
Tue Feb 28 10:15:31 UTC 2006


"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams at gnu.org>
> Gareth Bowker wrote:
> >  Under UK law, that would be incitement to religious hatred, and
> >  illegal.  Using your logic, because I allowed anyone to modify my
> >  work, I can be sued. This is clearly ridiculous.
> 
> But this wasn't an clear modification, it was the addition of new
> material too.

By adding an invariant section containing content forbidden in
some country (incitement to religious hatred in the UK, for example,
DMCA-busting advice in the US), you can impose geographic restrictions
to the manual. A variation on the Encyclopedias Forbidden bug.

Of course, this is arguably just exploiting bugs in local laws,
similar to the problems with Quake and the German Youth Protection
Laws. It's still a pain in the backside.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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