On May 16, 2007, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> There is there no guarantee that it will be used properly. >> The point being? > It is open to abuse. This is a red herring. If someone modifies a GFDLed text in an abusive way, adding an invariant section, the community can just ignore that change, or go back to the previous published version of that document and start from that. If the original author published the first version of a text under the GFDL with an abusive invariant section, the community can just ignore that whole document, or realize that the if the GFDL didn't provide the author with means to publish that document in such a way that nobody could modify or remove that portion, he might as well have chosen another license that provided him with this ability, and then, depending on the chosen license, we might all end up worse off. Under this light, I ask: so what? >>> If anybody adds text like say "Free software sucks" in a invariant >>> section then we can't include that documentation >> Why not? > Unrelated to technical content. And? We ship the GPL. We even ship its preamble. How is any of that related to technical content? Why should this even matter? And, more importantly, how does the presence of invariant sections actually gets in the way of the exercise of any of the freedoms? >> Documentation is not software. Licenses are not software. I'm trying >> to discuss software freedom issues. What are you trying to prove with >> this distraction? > It is not a distraction from a distribution view point. We don't > distribute just software. When discussing freedom in software how it > applies to document is very related. I see. It is a major distraction from the point I was trying to make in this thread, but it is indeed a relevant discussion for Fedora. Please accept my apologies. I'm changing the subject to reflect the change of focus, such that it doesn't feel like a distraction any more ;-) >> So can software licenses and copyright notices. So what are you going >> to do, ban software licenses and copyright notices because they can be >> abused? > Invariant sections in document has nothing in common with license and > copyright notices. Except that one of the main purpose of invariant sections *is* to contain a copy of the license the program is under. Look, for example, at GCC's documentation. Start here: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-3-Manual/gcc/copying.html Advance to the following section. How could the manual possibly cover the licensing terms of the program *and* of the manual itself if they couldn't be invariant sections? How could they even comply with the licensing terms of the license documents themselves, that don't permit modification? Now go back to chapter 16. That's the sort of content that some poeple who want to rewrite history (*) might qualify as abusive. But is that an invariant section? Surprise! It isn't! (*) from what's written in the last paragraph of section 2 in http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.01 Now go back to chapter 15. That's another invariant section. Is it abusive? I don't think so. I think it's useful. I think it's very good that nobody can remove that piece of advice. Sure, it's probably a whole page, so it might be abusive in a very short document. But the GCC manual is several hundred pages long. So that's ok. And, again, that particular chapter is under a license that wouldn't permit integration as a section that wasn't invariant. >> Oh, non-Free firmware can also be abused. Can we ban it too, pretty >> please? ;-) > How are you helping? There is still no packaging draft presented. What does packaging have to do with this? The freedom promise darft was presented about a week ago. Still no comments, still no wiki page. As for the other document I mentioned, I'm still waiting for feedback from other FSFs members. Meanwhile, we're discussing applying firmer standards to documentation than to software, as if that even made sense. As if invariant sections could possibly become a more serious issue than being unable to improve, or get someone else to improve, the software that runs on one of the CPUs attached to a computer, just because it's called by this distracting term firmware. As if invariant sections could possibly become a more serious issue than being forced to publish modified versions of a program only intended for internal use, somehow notifying the original author about it in a timely fashion (what if it turns out to be impossible? you've already distributed the program by then!), or being restricted in how much one can charge for the distribution of the program in source form only? In case it's not clear, I'm talking about the Reciprocal Public License, that is held as an Open-Source License, but it quite obviously disrespects the freedoms to modify and to distribute modified versions of the program, by imposing unreasonable (and business-unfriendly!) conditions on them. http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#NonFreeSoftwareLicense http://www.opensource.org/licenses/rpl.php http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical I can't tell whether it was a mistake by OSI to approve it, or a bug in the OSD itself, since it was originally (DFSG) intended as a set of objective criteria with the same meaning as that of the FSD. Now, I don't know whether any software in Fedora is under this license. But our policies permit software under this license to be integrated. But then, all of a sudden, businesses built around charging for the service of distributing *only* source code in physical media, which from the Free Software goals of Fedora they might take for granted, would become copyright infringers, for making a profit out of Fedora source media sets. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} _______________________________________________ fedora-advisory-board mailing list fedora-advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board
