Hi Lauri :) On Saturday, 7 January 2006 13:39, Lauri Watts wrote: > The FDL, with the above terms, is the only license currently in use in KDE, > although there are some legacy documents licensed under the GPL. > > Before this goes any further, can you please show me where (and why) debian > believes the GFDL *with no invariant sections and no front/back cover > texts* is a non-free license? http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml
Quoting from there: "The problems with the GFDL fall into three major categories, which are treated in detail below." The DRM Restriction ------------------- Section 2 (VERBATIM COPYING) of the GFDL goes beyond the traditional source requirement in copyleft licenses in an important way: according to the GFDL no copy may ever be subject to "technical measures to obstruct or control" reading and copying. This means that: * It is not limited to the act of distribution (i.e., it applies to private copies as well). * It rules out the possibility that a version be distributed on some form of DRM media (for technical reasons, perhaps), even while providing source (i.e., a transparent copy) in an unencumbered way at the same time. * As written, it would outlaw actions like changing the permission of a copy of the document on your machine, storing it on an encrypted file system, distributing a copy over an encrypted link (Obstruct or control the reading is not clarified to apply merely to the recipient), or even storing it on a file-sharing system with non-world-readable permissions. Consider that the GFDL currently prohibits distribution on DRM media, as compared to the GPL which requires distribution on non-DRM media. This is a serious additional restriction. Transparent And Opaque Copies ----------------------------- Section 3 (Copying in Quantity) of the GFDL states that it is not enough to just put a transparent copy of a document alongside with the opaque version when you are distributing it (which is all that you need to do for sources under the GPL, for example). Instead, the GFDL insists that you must somehow include a machine-readable Transparent copy (i.e., not allow the opaque form to be downloaded without the transparent form) or keep the transparent form available for download at a publicly accessible location for one year after the last distribution of the opaque form. It is our belief that as long as you make the source and binaries available so that the users can see what's available and take what they want, you have done what is required of you. It is up to the user whether to download the transparent form. This is a paraphrase from the GPL FAQ The requirements for redistributors should be to make sure the users can get the transparent form, not to force users to download the transparent form even if they don't want it. > For the record, relicensing most of our documentation will be impossible. > There are several people with stated objections to using the GPL for > documentation, many people we have no way of contacting, and a couple who > are no longer alive, which makes them fairly difficult to contact. Yeah, I feared that :( Best regards -- Isaac Clerencia at Warp Networks, http://www.warp.es Work: <isaac at warp.es> | Debian: <isaac at debian.org> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-doc-english/attachments/20060107/7bbe4c84/attachment.sig
