[Fsfe-ie] stuff from the past week

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

On Sun, Oct 26, 2003 at 10:52:30PM +0000, Jimmy O'Regan wrote:
> And the FSF approve dodgy licenses like the APSL-2 and the Affero GPL,
> and release manuals with unremovable, invariant political essays and
> expect that people still consider the manual as a whole to be free.
> There is no longer One True Meaning of Free either.

As I mentioned in a part of my mail that you snipped, the GNU FDL is
one issue where I disagree with FSF.  I have discussed it with them,
and there is disagreement over this within FSF, change is coming.  I
hope we can put more pressure on them to fix this if we speak with a
unified voice (assuming there is consensus that this is a problem).

The Affero GPL is a test-solution to the "webservices loophole" in the
GNU GPL.  This covers a valid part of copyright known as "public
performance of a work".  GPLv3 may contain a different solution.

The APSL-2 is indeed Free Software, but there are better FS licenses,
so FSF say:
   "We recommend that you not use this license for new software that
    you write, but it is ok to use and improve the software released
    under this license."
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html)

If you have specific concerns with either license, I'd be happy to
discuss them and possibly raise them with FSF if there is consensus
that they are valid issues.

You can't please all the people all the time, etc.

We can get nothing done and sling mud about implementation details, or
we can work to get Free Software into schools, non-profits,
governments, and businesses and be ready to counter problematic EU
legislation.  I'll opt for the latter.

A good related story to read is:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html#BIKESHED-PAINTING

-- 
Ciaran O'Riordan - http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/