On Mon, May 06, 2002 at 12:23:16PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Alessandro Rubini rubini@gnu.org wrote:
[...] A program usually has little "philosophy" in it, it's mostly practical work.
I thought the GNU documentation licence was intended for manuals?
It's intented for documentation. That documentation can have a section about the philosophy related of the thing documented, e.g. the GNU manifesto could be included to say why a specific GNU program was created.
[...] There is little damage to the original author if the modified program doesn't work.
If it works in an "incorrect manner", does it damage the original author? Is the author harmed if their software is modified to help run and promote a detestable organisation?
You fail to see that a program is somethings functional and documentation is not and you have to treat is like that.
[...] Such a document can be printed on paper, so the reader can't readily get to the original document.
Programs may be run disconnected from a network.
Documentation can also be read on the moon using software which runs disconnected from earth's network. What's your point?
[...] And even if there is "prominent notice" of every file that has been changed, it's rarely read.
I think people normally read the author's names on the "cover".
But you say that the requirements to put the right things on the cover are bad, don't you?
[...] I also think that "verbatim copying is permitted" is the best license for non-documentation writings.
That may be the case, if you purely want to spread your opinion. It's not a Free licence, though, is it? It doesn't help people to build upon your work, unless you allow "verbatim copying in whole or part with attribution".
Despite its name, the GFDL appears not to give the full freedom to use, study, modify and redistribute.
It the a free *documentation*, not a *free* software license. You are naming things which are in the definition of free software.
After thinking about this some more, I think Debian are probably correct to classify it as non-free and FSFE may wish to consider asking GNU to fix their licence, even only the name.
Debian doesn't classify the license as a non-free documentation license, all documentation licensed under the FDL are in main and there are no plans to move it to non-free. There is no reason the FSFE should ask GNU to reconsider.
Jeroen Dekkers