On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 08:53:45AM -0500, Michael Poole wrote: > Peter Vandenabeele writes: > > I did not understand why a document with invariant sections cannot > > be part of "Free/main" (in the Debian context) and the GPL license > > which states that it only allows verbatim copies can be. > > An invariant section is an integral part of the documentation; by the > GFDL's definition, it is otherwise irrelevant content. The license is > legally required metadata: The copyright owner provides a particular > license to users, and those users must know exactly what that license > is. No redistributor may alter that license's text and pass it off as > applying to the original software.
Thanks. I hope I understand it now: Because the license is _legally required_ it is acceptable (as an exception) to be in an "invariant" form in "main". But an "invariant section" in the terms of GFDL, when it is a free choice of the author (and thus not legally required), is not acceptable in the current definition of "Free" in Debian. Peter