Re: PROPOSED: interpretive guidelines regarding DFSG 3, modifiability, and invariant text
I'm wading into dangerous waters here, methinks... :) I think Branden's proposal is well-intentioned, but ultimately the wrong approach to dealing with this problem. I think the standard that should be applied is not about kilobytes or percentages, but whether or not the licensing restrictions on ancillary materials harm the ability to make derivative works. For example, in the case of GNU Emacs, we have the "misc" directory full of all sorts of philosophical ramblings on various topics. None of them have anything to do with Emacs; we could completely rewrite Emacs without anything there being affected. So their "non-freeness" doesn't seem to harm anything. On the other hand, if the GNU Emacs manual had a non-free license on the parts dealing with the operation of the program, then we might have a problem. At least in the case of documentation and other ancillary materials regarding software, the line seems pretty clear-cut: if the materials document something that could change as a result of changing the program, they should be free; otherwise, who cares? I realize the case of "3 pages of documentation with 100 pages of lame novella" isn't covered here; in that case, I would expect the maintainer's judgement (is the 100 pages of lame novella worth 3 pages of worthwhile text... my gut feeling says "no") to take over. If it isn't associated with software at all, ancillary materials probably don't have a place in Debian. For example, the text of Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (copyrighted, non-DFSG-free) has no place in Debian, even though it is an incredibly eloquent piece of writing, because it has nothing to do with computer software. I don't know about the edge case of standards documentation, etc (doc-html-w3, for example) that I'm sure most of us would agree isn't in the same category as the acknowledgements in the GNU manuals. There's a case to be made for exceptions for things that are standards (I certainly wouldn't want people promulgating a modified version of the National Electrical Code, for example), but I think my proposed criteria wouldn't address that case, leaving it verboten as before. I realize this leaves the door open for the inclusion of great volumes of perjorative or simply annoying ancillary documentation in Debian; today "Linux-and-GNU", tomorrow "Geeks-with-Guns", next week my "great" collection of poetry I wrote in secondary school. On the other hand I can't see a fair way to include all of GNU Emacs, including the (IMHO) crap in misc, without opening the door to rafts of other crap anyway without a "if RMS wrote it, it's OK" exception that smacks of hypocrisy. And since I don't see either RMS removing that material or us excising it from our package of emacs over his objections, the only way forward is some sort of *gasp* exercise of reasonable judgment by maintainers. Chris -- Chris Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/ pgpPKzWwaqHwv.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PROPOSED: interpretive guidelines regarding DFSG 3, modifiability, and invariant text
On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 09:41:06PM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote:
> You'd rather have a quantitative rule, and the ability to occasionally
> say "Yes, it violates the numerical limits, but it's not abuse, and
> we're going to accept it." (Again, that's how I understand your
> position.) But this ends up being as open to flame wars and nitpicking
> as the other way, at least once the first exception is made ("but you
> made an exception for foo, so why are you trying to censor me??!??!").
It's easier to put stuff in than take stuff out. People will whine all
the louder if we decide retroactively that their package isn't free
enough for main.
> I'd rather admit up front that it was judgement thing.
That's right. My quantitative policy will, hopefully, force people to
look at what they're packaging. Some of them might even manage to use
judgement before saying "GNU FDL! Good for main! ".
Moreover, I'd like this policy, if adopted, to be known to developers
generally, and well-publicized, so that people don't think the archive
maintainers are exercising some mysterious veto power when someone
blindly uploads a GNU FDL-licensed package which abuses Invariant
Sections or even consists entirely of them.
--
G. Branden Robinson| You could wire up a dead rat to a
Debian GNU/Linux | DIMM socket and the PC BIOS memory
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | test would pass it just fine.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Ethan Benson
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Re: PROPOSED: interpretive guidelines regarding DFSG 3, modifiability, and invariant text
On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 05:41:00PM -0700, Richard Stallman wrote: > This is one possibility I proposed to RMS. Essentially, I proposed that > all Invariant Sections had to be placed in debian/copyright, and that > any duplicates of his Invariant text in the "actual" documentation would > be modifiable. > > That is unacceptable because it would allow modified versions of the > GNU Manifesto. ...but not modified versions that carried the FSF's endorsement (unless the FSF decided to do so), or whatever other Endorsements you wanted to place on it under the GNU FDL. The official version would continue to exist in debian/copyright or some similar file. Even today, the FSF's control over the GNU Manifesto is not complete; someone could always author a parody of it and such a work would be protected speech under the First Amendment, at least in the United States. > The GFDL, like the previous Emacs Manual license, was designed to > require every copy of the Emacs Manual to include an unmodified copy > of the GNU Manifesto. This requirement would still be met. It would, however, permit people to have (or not) duplicates of the GNU Manifesto inside the package, some of which may be modified. But that's what they would be: duplicates. The original, unmodified version would have to be present under the GNU FDL and I am not asking for that to change. I get the feeling you must be concerned about people modifying the GNU Manifesto in bad faith -- so as to distort its meaning, for instance. Formatting changes (making section headings larger, etc.) would probably be unobjectionable and I'm not sure style of presentation is well-protected under existing copyright law. Under my proposal, people would always know where to look for the Official Version of the GNU Manifesto, or any other Invariant text, in the event that a package maintainer does something nefarious with his freedom to alter (for instance) the info file. Isn't the expectation that a Debian developer would molest the text of the GNU Manifesto (other than to omit it, but he can't omit the one in debian/copyright under my proposal anyway) one of those extreme scenarios we've been discussing? Is omission such a disaster since the GNU Manifesto would never be truly removed from the package? Furthermore, I doubt any package maintainer would bother, since people who install GNU Emacs are, with all due respect, probably not gravely concerned about economizing on disk space. Furthermore, any such bad-neighbor activity on the part of a Debian developer would surely get him yelled at from within the Project. While there are people in the Debian Project who have varying opinions about the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, I doubt there is anyone who would seriously advocate modifying the GNU Manifesto so as to corrupt its text. My guess is that you perceive the threat as coming from licensees of the GNU Emacs manual that don't share the good relationship that the FSF and Debian have. But if the GNU FDL requires that Invariant Texts be published in unmodified form at least once within a work, how silly is a Big Evil O'Publisher going to look printing a GNU Manual with "their" adulterated version of the GNU Manifesto when the real version, complete with the Endorsements required by the GNU FDL, must also be between the same covers? They'd be a laughing stock, or worse (for them), accused of a Stalinistic attempt to rewrite history as stupid as it would be evil, since the use of the History Eraser would not be permitted them. They could only scrawl their bowdlerized version alongside the original. Again, I must emphasize the point: I am not asking that the freedom be granted for GNU FDL licensees to omit Invariant Texts entirely. > I hope that Debian, if it adopts a version of your guidelines, will > modify them so as to accept the Emacs Manual. I want to see the Emacs Manual in Debian, too, but not at any cost. I personally could live with it being in non-free, and encouraging people to buy paper copies from the FSF, perhaps, but I think such a scenario would be suboptimal, perhaps awkward, and would encourage people to blow this difficult but cordial difference of opinion out of proportion. -- G. Branden Robinson| You don't just decide to break Debian GNU/Linux | Kubrick's code of silence and then [EMAIL PROTECTED] | get drawn away from it to a http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | discussion about cough medicine. pgpU9mK8b2CSC.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PROPOSED: interpretive guidelines regarding DFSG 3, modifiability, and invariant text
On 28-Nov-01, 09:55 (CST), Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I don't think you've been reading my messages.
I have. I didn't go back and re-read before I posted, so I stupidly
managed to pick a bad example.
> 2) I've said every time I've mentioned threshholds that they are numbers
> off the top of my head and that someone should do empirical analysis to
> determine better ones. Are you volunteering?
No. My point is not that the numerical limits you've picked are wrong,
but that *any* numerical limit is going to lead to problems.
> 3) Nowhere did I say that exceptions could not be granted on a
> case-by-case basis, just as we do for Debian Policy violations. Where
> it makes more sense for a package to violate Policy than abide by it, we
> let a package do so. I don't see why this should be so different.
As I understand it, the problem you foresee is abuse of invariant
sections, and that if Debian does not have some sort of quantitative
rule to apply, we won't be able to point at a particular instance and
say "That's abuse, and we're not going to let it in." In other words,
we would be making an exception to the general policy that the GFDL was
an acceptable way to license documentation and other works that were
primarily "book-like" rather than software.
You'd rather have a quantitative rule, and the ability to occasionally
say "Yes, it violates the numerical limits, but it's not abuse, and
we're going to accept it." (Again, that's how I understand your
position.) But this ends up being as open to flame wars and nitpicking
as the other way, at least once the first exception is made ("but you
made an exception for foo, so why are you trying to censor me??!??!").
I'd rather admit up front that it was judgement thing.
> > Obviously not. But this is the kind of problem one has when trying to
> > quantify what is basically an issue for qualitative judgement.
>
> It's certainly the kind of problem you have when you distort someone's
> position and make straw-man arguments.
I'll cop to the straw-man, but I don't think I distorted your basic
position. You think that it's better to have a quantitative measure of
how much non-modifiable stuff we can have. I think that leads to more
problems than it solves (or alternatively, that it doesn't solve the
real problem).
Steve
--
Steve Greenland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Re: PROPOSED: interpretive guidelines regarding DFSG 3, modifiability, and invariant text
On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 05:40:46PM -0700, Richard Stallman wrote: > No position on this question can be construed from the DFSG. The > question is what right criterion to use in a specific part of your > proposed guidelines. The DFSG does not say much about this whole > area, which is why you are proposing to write guidelines. I don't think it's true that *no* position can be construed. The most reasonable interpretation of DFSG 3 in and of itself is that everything packaged by Debian must be modifiable and redistributable under the original license, with no exceptions. However, that interpretation has practical problems, as everyone knows. I'm not interested in doing my impression of Antonin Scalia. > Hence my arbitrary 16kB (for non-documentation) and 5% (for > documentation) limits. I understand that you dislike these, but do you > see anything wrong with me piggybacking my very large and sorry attempt > at the Great American Novel on some documentation I may have written for, > say, the SDL library, and using the GNU FDL to do it? > > That's another case of arguing for one extreme by proposing an > opposite extreme. Why choose between extremes? Binary search. If we both agree that the extremes of "absolutely everything must be modifiable" and "shipping a Invariant novel with your technical documentation" are both unreasonable, at least we know that it is possible that there is point on the continuum in between that will be satisfactory to both of us. If you were in militant support of the "novel" scenario, or if I felt like being a strict constructionist about DFSG 3, there wouldn't be any ground upon which to negotiate further. It remains to be seen whether our respective penumbras of tolerance overlap, let alone whether the FSF and Debian generally can agree upon this issue, but I'm eager to continue working with you on it. -- G. Branden Robinson| Never attribute to malice that Debian GNU/Linux | which can be adequately explained [EMAIL PROTECTED] | by stupidity. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgpDXflDbfUwD.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PROPOSED: interpretive guidelines regarding DFSG 3, modifiability, and invariant text
This is one possibility I proposed to RMS. Essentially, I proposed that all Invariant Sections had to be placed in debian/copyright, and that any duplicates of his Invariant text in the "actual" documentation would be modifiable. That is unacceptable because it would allow modified versions of the GNU Manifesto. The GFDL, like the previous Emacs Manual license, was designed to require every copy of the Emacs Manual to include an unmodified copy of the GNU Manifesto. I hope that Debian, if it adopts a version of your guidelines, will modify them so as to accept the Emacs Manual.
Re: PROPOSED: interpretive guidelines regarding DFSG 3, modifiability, and invariant text
> GNU Emacs comes with some auxiliary material (non-technical articles) > that does not allow modification. I think that should be ok > because they are non-technical. That's a perfectly legitimate position in its own right, but it cannot reasonably be construed from the text of the DFSG. No position on this question can be construed from the DFSG. The question is what right criterion to use in a specific part of your proposed guidelines. The DFSG does not say much about this whole area, which is why you are proposing to write guidelines. Is all of the non-technical documentation in the Emacs manual really Secondary Text? I think so. It is about the reason for developing the GNU system, including Emacs. Perhaps you are interpreting the definition term in an overly strict way. Or is the FSF's intent to permit people to use the GNU FDL to protect a 3-page reference card for some program, accompanied by a 100-page novella That would be a distortion of the criterion, giving it an unreasonably lax interpretation. That is just as bad as giving it an overly strict interpretation. Hence my arbitrary 16kB (for non-documentation) and 5% (for documentation) limits. I understand that you dislike these, but do you see anything wrong with me piggybacking my very large and sorry attempt at the Great American Novel on some documentation I may have written for, say, the SDL library, and using the GNU FDL to do it? That's another case of arguing for one extreme by proposing an opposite extreme. Why choose between extremes?
Re: PROPOSED: interpretive guidelines regarding DFSG 3, modifiability, and invariant text
On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 07:52:17AM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote: > Hmm. The uncompressed GPL2 is 18k (at least in my > /usr/share/common-licenses; YMMV). There are many programs covered by > the GPL2 whose source code isn't even 18k, much less 360k (20*18k). > > So these done meet either of Branden's quantitative measurements. Do we > throw them out? I don't think you've been reading my messages. 1) Only the "Preamble" and "How to apply this license" parts of the GNU GPL could possibly be construed as something other than license terms, for which an exception is already granted; 2) I've said every time I've mentioned threshholds that they are numbers off the top of my head and that someone should do empirical analysis to determine better ones. Are you volunteering? 3) Nowhere did I say that exceptions could not be granted on a case-by-case basis, just as we do for Debian Policy violations. Where it makes more sense for a package to violate Policy than abide by it, we let a package do so. I don't see why this should be so different. > Obviously not. But this is the kind of problem one has when trying to > quantify what is basically an issue for qualitative judgement. It's certainly the kind of problem you have when you distort someone's position and make straw-man arguments. -- G. Branden Robinson| Q: How does a Unix guru have sex? Debian GNU/Linux | A: unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount; [EMAIL PROTECTED] |fsck;more;yes;fsck;fsck;fsck; http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |umount;sleep pgp6Sl40xpqCE.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PROPOSED: interpretive guidelines regarding DFSG 3, modifiability, and invariant text
On 27-Nov-01, 14:53 (CST), Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, Nov 27, 2001 at 06:59:57PM +, M. Drew Streib wrote: > > The intent, although IMO abusable, is to give the author a chance to make > > a statement, but continue to allow derivative works of all the actual > > relevant material. This is seen in a small degree in the GPL itself, > > which requires a copy of itself to be included in GPL'd works, and itself > > includes a preamble of text that we might term 'invariant' by FDL terms. > > Yes, I'm aware of that. Given that it is fairly small, and I happen to > be philosophically sympathetic to it, I don't have a big problem with > such material. Hmm. The uncompressed GPL2 is 18k (at least in my /usr/share/common-licenses; YMMV). There are many programs covered by the GPL2 whose source code isn't even 18k, much less 360k (20*18k). So these done meet either of Branden's quantitative measurements. Do we throw them out? Obviously not. But this is the kind of problem one has when trying to quantify what is basically an issue for qualitative judgement. Branden, I agree that the FDL is possibly subject to abuse, but I don't think this is the right approach. Yes, it might avoid the 'but you let in foo' wars, but it's wide open to "but it's only 37 bytes over the limit" wars. Steve
