FDL requirements for original author
Ben Finney
ben at benfinney.id.au
Sat Feb 9 01:36:55 UTC 2008
On 08-Feb-2008, David Gerard wrote:
> GFDL is free by all measures if you don't use invariant sections and
> so forth, isn't it? Does anyone dispute that?
Unmodifiable sections (not merely those the license calls "Invariant
Sections") are only the most prominent of the problematic issues of
the FDL. Even if a specific work does not exercise those parts of the
license, the other problems remain.
"Draft Debian Position Statement about the GNU Free Documentation
License"
Not ratified, but does cover many of the problems with the freedom
of works under the FDL.
<URL:http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml>
"A Simple Guide to the Problems of the GNU FDL"
<URL:http://mjr.towers.org.uk/blog/2006/fdl>
Many of the remaining problems have to do with the license attempting
to have "documentation" distinct from "program", even though there are
many works that are clearly both (e.g. Postscript documents).
It's unfortunate that some within the FSF choose to interpret
"software" as equivalent to "program", instead of the more tenable
position that "software" is a term as opposed to "hardware". This
leads to the even worse position that documentation recipients deserve
freedoms different from the freedoms deserved by recipients of
programs.
--
\ “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our |
`\ will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of |
_o__) others.” —Thomas Jefferson |
Ben Finney <ben at benfinney.id.au>
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