GNU FDL changes

[MJ Ray]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams at gnu.org> wrote:
>    The GFDL seems to prohibit that. Both verbatim and modified copies
>    are supposed to include a full copy of the actual license text, not
>    just a reference to it. See Sec. 2 para. 1 and Sec. 4 part H of the
>    GFDL.
>
> I was thinking of the new GFDL (when it is out), not the old one.  See
> section 6a. [...]

6a applies to excerpts of less than 20k characters of text, which
doesn't cover some articles, or of less than a minute of video.
Images don't seem to be allowed as excerpts at all.

Even under the new FDL, in general (section 2), you can only avoid
including the licence brick in the work itself if the work's licence
is registered with a national agency.  In the UK, the national agency
for copyright does not keep such a register and I expect most of the
EU is similar. (See http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy/c-claim/c-register.htm )

So, in most cases, the new FDL hasn't fixed that well-known bug.

I'm pretty sure that FSF were told that during the drafting process,
but I can't check or see the response because the comment search is
erroring yet again...  (It's ticket [gnu.org #336650] if anyone else
feels like chasing it.)

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html tel:+44-844-4437-237 -
Webmaster-developer, statistician, sysadmin, online shop builder,
consumer and workers co-operative member http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ -
Writing on koha, debian, sat TV, Kewstoke http://mjr.towers.org.uk/