On 3/3/22 2:54 PM, Florian Weimer wrote:
* Richard Fontana:
On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 3:45 PM Jilayne Lovejoy <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi all,
Fedora lists the GNU Free Documentation License as "good" for documentation. the GFDL has
this concept of "invariant sections" which can be declared or not in the license header.
If this is used, then it creates some restrictions for those sections and there are some other
specific obligations in the license. (I'm not going to try to explain this here, but if you are
interested, this is probably a better summary than trying to actually parse the text of the license
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-howto-opt.en.html)
Does any one know if GFDL is approved for Fedora regardless of if the invariant
section is triggered?
I think so, because doesn't the GFDL-licensed documentation in
Fedora-packaged GNU projects use invariant sections? Probably easy to
check.
Correct, the glibc manual has a non-trivial invariant section (that is
not the license text itself, that happens from time to time, too).
thanks - that makes sense, especially in light of the article I cited
above, which I don't think I've read before or not recently and sheds
light on the rationale for the invariant section part of GFDL that I
admittedly have always found a bit perplexing.
Reason for asking - I'm trying to finish up the compare of "good"
licenses (for documentation and content) in terms of whether they are on
the SPDX License List, which somewhat recently altered the GFDL
identifiers to differentiate on the invariant aspect due to someone
raising that is makes a difference as to obligations under the license.
So... hence the question of if Fedora considers all versions and
regardless of invariant sections as "good". I think you and Richard have
provided enough for the answer.
I was also inquiring internally as to whether this ever comes up in
questions with Red Hat customers or more broadly and I think that
question may have come across here - sorry about that! I was curious if
the presence of the invariant section being triggered impact comfort
with use of GFDL more widely (beyond Fedora). I hope not...
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