On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 12:26:07PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > As I tried to point out in the recent discussions about the GFDL (not > sure whether that point has come through, but anyway), although the GFDL > is crafted in a way which makes it not DFSG-free, IMHO there is nothing > wrong with the spirit, the intention, of the GFDL.
I'm not convinced we know what that intention is. Based on what I've seen from RMS, I don't think it's a good one at all. But it's hard to tell. Anyway, I don't have time for a detailed analysis at present, but I think the WDL has the same issues as the FDL with invariant stuff. "Include unmodified or remove" I could accept. "Include unmodified or jump through hoops" is not something I consider a wise course. I'm not yet convinced as to whether it's DFSG-free or not, but if I had to make a spot decision right now, I'd say not. I don't think the GFDL is a good place to start from when writing a documentation license, really. The WDL is a tangled mess. Start with the GPL instead, and try to answer this question: What do I want that this license does not already give me? Then, *without* attempting to write a license that meets these goals, just list them. We can probably deal with this more quickly based on evaluating whether and under what conditions those goals could be acceptable under the DFSG. [If anybody is interested in my amazing future-seeing powers, I predict that the result will either be the GPL or a non-free license. But hey, you never really know until you hit it with sticks]. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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