GFDL 1.3

Noah Slater nslater at bytesexual.org
Tue Nov 4 01:46:18 UTC 2008


On Tue, Nov 04, 2008 at 01:04:53AM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> Free software needs free software documentation, but the FSF seems content to
> redefine "free" for documentation

MJ Ray, are you arguing that "freedom" means the same in every context? Are you
arguing that my freedoms under the United Kingdom's social contract should be
identical to my software freedoms? I feel that you are being bewitched by the
word "freedom" in this manner. Just because the word remains the same across
contexts does not mean that its implications should remain the same.

Thus, I think it's fine that the FSF defines documentation freedom differently
than it does software freedom, and in fact freedom of personal expression.

cf. The GNU Verbatim License

> even to the point of introducing loopholes to help the (generally
> non-free-software) Creative Commons licences.

This is, I feel, deliberately misleading.

The Creative Commons is an organisation that provides canned licenses for
general use, some of which are free and some of which are not. That the Creative
Commons provides non-free licenses has absolutely nothing to do with the topic
under discussion.

Your mud slinging is counter-productive.

> This is quite an attitude change to past statments by RMS like "I cannot
> endorse Creative Commons as a whole, because some of its licenses are
> unacceptable. It would be self-delusion to try to endorse just some of the
> Creative Commons licenses, because people lump them together; they will
> misconstrue any endorsement of some as a blanket endorsement of all. I
> therefore find myself constrained to reject Creative Commons entirely."

I feel you are purposefully misrepresenting the FSF on this matter.

Just because the FSF has stated that it cannot endorse the Creative Commons as a
whole, which is an entirely understandable position, it does not mean that they
cannot see the value of the free culture licenses that they provide.

I'm not sure if this is a strawman or a deliberate attempt at misdirection.

Either way, I fail to see how it is at all relevant to the topic.

> > If the FSF were asked whether or not Debian (for example) could have the
> > Emacs manual under CC-BY-SA rather than the GFDL, I suspect they would
> > tell them to get lost, or words to that effect. [...]
>
> Well, the words that RMS actually used when a debian developer asked
> for manuals under the GPL were "the issue is not significant".
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/09/msg00391.html

Again, I feel you are deliberately misrepresenting Stallman.

He actually said:

  I don't think anyone ever did so.  In practice, the issue is not
  significant, since you can distribute the manual along with the
  software, and make the software access the manual in whichever way you
  want.

Which is a perfectly reasonable comment.

> It's amazing how much influence one can get by dubious relicensing to
> the FDL for a few years, isn't it?  Meanwhile, ordinary free software
> developers can't even get bugs in the license drafting website to be
> fixed and stay fixed...

Irrelevant.

> FSF seems increasingly broken.  Is it time for a developer-led organisation to
> fork its licences, so we can use "or later" again?

Well then, why don't you spend less time slinging mud and using current affairs
to badmouth the FSF, and more time being productive?

Best,

-- 
Noah Slater, http://bytesexual.org/nslater



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