Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
ke, 2006-01-25 kello 14:54 -0800, Jeff Carr kirjoitti: By this argument, the GPL must be removed or authors must allow anyone to modify it. Clearly the intent of the Debian community and the DFSG is not to require abandonment of the protections of the GPL. This argument is old, wrong, and has been discussed already in this thread. License texts themselves are the exception, it's necessary for them to be allowed to be non-modifiable. Please don't repeat old arguments, this discussion is unmanageably big already. -- RFC 1437 - yet another MIME specification Microsoft ignores -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Debian Project secretary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 11:40:20 +0100, Andreas Metzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [[PGP Signed Part:Failed] Signature made Fri Jan 13 02:21:11 2006 CST using DSA key ID 330C4A75 Good signature from Martin F. Krafft [...] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note: This key has expired! [...] You should refresh your copy of Martin's key from subkeys.pgp.net. Umm, no. I, and devotee, look at the official debian keyrings from keyring.d.o as authoritative for keys and signatures. I see. It seems to be fixed now anyway: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp$ gpg --keyring /tmp/fooo --keyserver keyring.debian.org --no-default-keyring --recv-keys 330C4A75 gpg: keyring `/tmp/fooo' created gpg: requesting key 330C4A75 from hkp server keyring.debian.org gpg: key 330C4A75: public key Martin F. Krafft [EMAIL PROTECTED] imported [...] [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp$ gpg --keyring /tmp/fooo -v --keyserver keyring.debian.org --no-default-keyring --list-keys 330C4A75 gpg: using classic trust model pub 1024D/330C4A75 2001-06-20 [expires: 2006-06-20] uid Martin F. Krafft [EMAIL PROTECTED] [...] cu andreas -- The 'Galactic Cleaning' policy undertaken by Emperor Zhark is a personal vision of the emperor's, and its inclusion in this work does not constitute tacit approval by the author or the publisher for any such projects, howsoever undertaken.(c) Jasper Ffforde -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [[PGP Signed Part:Failed] Signature made Fri Jan 13 02:21:11 2006 CST using DSA key ID 330C4A75 Good signature from Martin F. Krafft [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (AERAsec GmbH) [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (Debian) [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (MB! Sudetia) [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (Uni Zuerich) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note: This key has expired! [...] You should refresh your copy of Martin's key from subkeys.pgp.net. cu andreas -- The 'Galactic Cleaning' policy undertaken by Emperor Zhark is a personal vision of the emperor's, and its inclusion in this work does not constitute tacit approval by the author or the publisher for any such projects, howsoever undertaken.(c) Jasper Ffforde -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 04:55:43AM +0100, Adeodato Sim?? wrote: As I expect that at least one of the seconds/proposer will object to this amendment (heh), I'm actively looking for seconds myself now. I personally object to this because I find actually what you call bugs to be much more practical issues that the invariant sections because they affect the Debian CD-ROM as a whole, while you can just ignore non-modifiable documents even if they are in main. I strongly support moving the GFDL document to non-free and provide an extra iso-image with them. Of course, the FSF has the option to release a GFDL 1.3 that address these issue, and then we could take advantage of the upgrade clause. (I would support an amendment hinting the FSF to release a fixed GFDL if someone is smart enough to draft one, because this is clearly the best solution for GFDL documents without non-Invariant Section.) The most grave of these problems are the so-called invariant sections, which are non-removable, non-modifiable parts of the document that the GFDL allows in works under this license. However, modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, so this restriction is not acceptable for us. I disagree that is is the most grave of these problems's. 2. We believe that works licensed under the GFDL that include no such unmodifiable sections do fully meet the spirit of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and have a place in our distribution despite the other problems (minor, in comparison) that the GFDL has. I don't find them minor at all. Problems of the GFDL I. 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: (a) It is not limited to the act of distribution (i.e., it applies to private copies as well). (b) 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. (c) 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. This affect the distribution of Debian iso images through encrypted channel which is more and more frequent. If the GFDL document where moved to non-free we could provide an extra iso-image with all the GFDL document and only this iso image would be restricted. If that can help settle the issue, I volunteer helping building the extra GFDL iso image. II. 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. 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. This might be fixable technically, but currently we are in violation of this requirement, so we cannot legally ship GFDL documents anyway, which make this whole GR moot. This requirement is extremly costly for anyone attempting to distribute Sarge either as a mirror or as an ISO image. Cheers, Bill. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 11:30:55PM +0100, Bill Allombert wrote: This requirement is extremly costly for anyone attempting to distribute Sarge either as a mirror or as an ISO image. Can you point to testimony of people actually hindered by this? Michael -- Michael Banck Debian Developer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.advogato.org/person/mbanck/diary.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 11:40:20 +0100, Andreas Metzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [[PGP Signed Part:Failed] Signature made Fri Jan 13 02:21:11 2006 CST using DSA key ID 330C4A75 Good signature from Martin F. Krafft [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (AERAsec GmbH) [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (Debian) [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (MB! Sudetia) [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (Uni Zuerich) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note: This key has expired! [...] You should refresh your copy of Martin's key from subkeys.pgp.net. Umm, no. I, and devotee, look at the official debian keyrings from keyring.d.o as authoritative for keys and signatures. manoj -- Morton's Law: If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer. Debian Project secretary [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://vote.debian.org/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Le Ven 13 Janvier 2006 04:04, Anthony Towns a écrit : On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 09:53:43PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 11:37:37AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: So, I've updated the wiki [0] in response to most of the suggestions on the list so far. Okay, given the lack of further response (except for dato's alternate proposal!), I've tweaked the wording one more time, and I think this is the final version. Seconds appreciated. So, we've had five seconds making this a formal proposal: Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Kalle Kivimaa [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Roger Leigh [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dato's alternate proposal (which for the record I don't accept as an replacement of the original, which thus means it will be a separate option on the ballot if it receives sufficient seconds) has received three so far by my count: Christopher Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-Id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pierre Habouzit [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-Id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hamish Moffatt [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] you miss (at least) : From: Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Esteban Manchado =?iso-8859-1?Q?Vel=E1zquez?= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Christian Perrier [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and a couple of others. -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O[EMAIL PROTECTED] OOOhttp://www.madism.org pgpRAdVjE8t0f.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Thanks to Luk for setting things straight. I hereby second Dato's proposal, which is included in full below. also sprach Adeodato Simó [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2006.01.10.0455 +0100]: It's been six months since the social contract changes that forbid non-free documentation went into effect [0], and we're still distributing GFDLed stuff in unstable [1]. I think we should get serious about fixing that, and as part of that that we should release the following statement (or one like it) on the GFDL: I propose an amendment to this GR, consisting in replacing the existing text with the one below. I initially tried to follow Anthony's original text as close as possible, and just add a paragraph and reword a couple sentences, but I didn't quite like the result, so I ended up rewriting it; if somebody manages to fit point (2) below in the original text, be my guest. The section Problems of the GFDL comes straight away from Manoj's Draft Position Statement [1]. [1] http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html As I expect that at least one of the seconds/proposer will object to this amendment (heh), I'm actively looking for seconds myself now. Thanks. ---8--- Debian and the GNU Free Documentation License = This is the position of Debian Project about the GNU Free Documentation License as published by the Free Software Foundation: 1. We consider that the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, explained in detail in the Problems of the GFDL section below. The most grave of these problems are the so-called invariant sections, which are non-removable, non-modifiable parts of the document that the GFDL allows in works under this license. However, modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, so this restriction is not acceptable for us. 2. We believe that works licensed under the GFDL that include no such unmodifiable sections do fully meet the spirit of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and have a place in our distribution despite the other problems (minor, in comparison) that the GFDL has. Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. 3. Despite the compromise above, GFDL'd documentation is still not free of trouble: as an example, it is incompatible with the major free software licenses, which means that GFDL'd text can't be incorporated into free programs. For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license their works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under a well known free software license like the the GPL or the BSD license. Problems of the GFDL I. 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: (a) It is not limited to the act of distribution (i.e., it applies to private copies as well). (b) 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. (c) 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. II. 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
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
I second Adeodato Simó's amendment: On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 04:55:43AM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote: I propose an amendment to this GR, consisting in replacing the existing text with the one below. I initially tried to follow Anthony's original text as close as possible, and just add a paragraph and reword a couple sentences, but I didn't quite like the result, so I ended up rewriting it; if somebody manages to fit point (2) below in the original text, be my guest. The section Problems of the GFDL comes straight away from Manoj's Draft Position Statement [1]. [...] ---8--- Debian and the GNU Free Documentation License = This is the position of Debian Project about the GNU Free Documentation License as published by the Free Software Foundation: 1. We consider that the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, explained in detail in the Problems of the GFDL section below. The most grave of these problems are the so-called invariant sections, which are non-removable, non-modifiable parts of the document that the GFDL allows in works under this license. However, modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, so this restriction is not acceptable for us. 2. We believe that works licensed under the GFDL that include no such unmodifiable sections do fully meet the spirit of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and have a place in our distribution despite the other problems (minor, in comparison) that the GFDL has. Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. 3. Despite the compromise above, GFDL'd documentation is still not free of trouble: as an example, it is incompatible with the major free software licenses, which means that GFDL'd text can't be incorporated into free programs. For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license their works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under a well known free software license like the the GPL or the BSD license. Problems of the GFDL I. 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: (a) It is not limited to the act of distribution (i.e., it applies to private copies as well). (b) 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. (c) 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. II. 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. 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. III. Invariant Sections
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
In linux.debian.vote Adeodato wrote: I propose an amendment to this GR, consisting in replacing the existing text with the one below. I initially tried to follow Anthony's original text as close as possible, and just add a paragraph and reword a couple sentences, but I didn't quite like the result, so I ended up rewriting it; if somebody manages to fit point (2) below in the original text, be my guest. The section Problems of the GFDL comes straight away from Manoj's Draft Position Statement [1]. [1] http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html As I expect that at least one of the seconds/proposer will object to this amendment (heh), I'm actively looking for seconds myself now. I second the proposed amendment quoted fully below. Cheers, Moritz ---8--- Debian and the GNU Free Documentation License =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D This is the position of Debian Project about the GNU Free Documentation License as published by the Free Software Foundation: 1. We consider that the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, explained in detail in the Problems of the GFDL section below. The most grave of these problems are the so-called invariant sections, which are non-removable, non-modifiable parts of the document that the GFDL allows in works under this license. However, modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, so this restriction is not acceptable for us. 2. We believe that works licensed under the GFDL that include no such unmodifiable sections do fully meet the spirit of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and have a place in our distribution despite the other problems (minor, in comparison) that the GFDL has. Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. 3. Despite the compromise above, GFDL'd documentation is still not free of trouble: as an example, it is incompatible with the major free software licenses, which means that GFDL'd text can't be incorporated into free programs. For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license their works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under a well known free software license like the the GPL or the BSD license. Problems of the GFDL I. 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:=20 =20 (a) It is not limited to the act of distribution (i.e., it applies to private copies as well).=20 (b) 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.=20 (c) 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.=20 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.=20 II. 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.=20 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
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Adeodato =?utf-8?B?U2ltw7M=?= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Right, FSF stuff goes away. OTOH, I feel utterly ashamed each time I imagine the possibility of the following conversation taking place: =C2=ABHey, fellow free software developer, thanks for writing such a cool program and releasing it under the GPL! I also see that you wrote excellent manual for it, nice! Uhm, I see it's licensed under the GFDL, why? Oh I see, these FSF folks that created the GPL told you that the GFDL is a reasonable license for documentation, and you fscking trusted them?! Bad move, guy. No unmodifiable sections you say? Bah, you know we in Debian care more about legalese than about being fair to the rest of the community. [...] If you explain it that way, you're a bozo and you're unhelpful. This should not be about Trust Debian more than the FSF but should be about free software needs free software manuals. Explain that allowing secured media (when it has no impact on user freedom), distribution without forced source download or long-term archiving and easy copying between program and manual are all useful freedoms. Would ftpmasters and mirror operators be able to either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or [...] ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public anyway? I thought similar source distribution requirements were a practical problem just now? Blindly following anyone else's opinion has the potential to cause problems for you. FSF are pretty good, but I think their goals for the FDL (to require distribution of the GNU Manifesto and/or manual sponsor's adverts) are significantly different from free software, or what many free software supporters would aim for in a manual. If a similar approach was applied to free software, we could attach an unremovable debian-policy and sponsor adverts to the debian release CD/DVD images. Do you see the problems with that? The security and transparent problems look like bugs more than conflict over the goals, but they are still problematic. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Merle Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Would ftpmasters and mirror operators be able to either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or [...] ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public anyway? I thought similar source distribution requirements were a practical problem just now? Yes. It just requires a policy stating that each binary package must include a transparent copy. This isn't terribly difficult, it's just irritating. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] My preferred name is you -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
* Esteban Manchado Velázquez [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2006-01-13 09:26]: I second Adeodato Simó's amendment: I hereby second this proposal as well. On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 04:55:43AM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote: I propose an amendment to this GR, consisting in replacing the existing text with the one below. I initially tried to follow Anthony's original text as close as possible, and just add a paragraph and reword a couple sentences, but I didn't quite like the result, so I ended up rewriting it; if somebody manages to fit point (2) below in the original text, be my guest. The section Problems of the GFDL comes straight away from Manoj's Draft Position Statement [1]. [...] ---8--- Debian and the GNU Free Documentation License = This is the position of Debian Project about the GNU Free Documentation License as published by the Free Software Foundation: 1. We consider that the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, explained in detail in the Problems of the GFDL section below. The most grave of these problems are the so-called invariant sections, which are non-removable, non-modifiable parts of the document that the GFDL allows in works under this license. However, modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, so this restriction is not acceptable for us. 2. We believe that works licensed under the GFDL that include no such unmodifiable sections do fully meet the spirit of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and have a place in our distribution despite the other problems (minor, in comparison) that the GFDL has. Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. 3. Despite the compromise above, GFDL'd documentation is still not free of trouble: as an example, it is incompatible with the major free software licenses, which means that GFDL'd text can't be incorporated into free programs. For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license their works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under a well known free software license like the the GPL or the BSD license. Problems of the GFDL I. 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: (a) It is not limited to the act of distribution (i.e., it applies to private copies as well). (b) 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. (c) 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. II. 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. The requirements for
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Merle Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Would ftpmasters and mirror operators be able to either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or [...] ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public anyway? I thought similar source distribution requirements were a practical problem just now? Yes. It just requires a policy stating that each binary package must include a transparent copy. This isn't terribly difficult, it's just irritating. Given that I expect many people are about to upload non-free packages with GFDL documentation, it would probably be worthwhile to publicize this requirement more widely. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Hi, [[PGP Signed Part:Failed] Signature made Fri Jan 13 02:21:11 2006 CST using DSA key ID 330C4A75 Good signature from Martin F. Krafft [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (AERAsec GmbH) [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (Debian) [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (MB! Sudetia) [EMAIL PROTECTED] aka Martin F. Krafft (Uni Zuerich) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note: This key has expired! [GNUPG:] KEYEXPIRED 1087729976 [GNUPG:] SIGEXPIRED deprecated-use-keyexpired-instead [GNUPG:] KEYEXPIRED 1087729976 [GNUPG:] SIGEXPIRED deprecated-use-keyexpired-instead [GNUPG:] KEYEXPIRED 1087729976 [GNUPG:] SIGEXPIRED deprecated-use-keyexpired-instead [GNUPG:] KEYEXPIRED 1087729976 [GNUPG:] SIGEXPIRED deprecated-use-keyexpired-instead [GNUPG:] SIG_ID j95dghI+sOZbzZzOznuUH+SEhtg 2006-01-13 1137140471 [GNUPG:] KEYEXPIRED 1087729976 [GNUPG:] SIGEXPIRED deprecated-use-keyexpired-instead [GNUPG:] KEYEXPIRED 1087729976 [GNUPG:] SIGEXPIRED deprecated-use-keyexpired-instead [GNUPG:] KEYEXPIRED 1087729976 [GNUPG:] SIGEXPIRED deprecated-use-keyexpired-instead [GNUPG:] EXPKEYSIG 220BC883330C4A75 Martin F. Krafft [EMAIL PROTECTED] [GNUPG:] VALIDSIG ACF49D3E1E1D5EE2B2035E53220BC883330C4A75 2006-01-13 1137140471 0 3 0 17 2 01 ACF49D3E1E1D5EE2B2035E53220BC883330C4A75 Primary key fingerprint: ACF4 9D3E 1E1D 5EE2 B203 5E53 220B C883 330C 4A75 ] manoj -- A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart that looks at her watch. James Beard Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: Okay, given the lack of further response (except for dato's alternate proposal!), I've tweaked the wording one more time, and I think this is the final version. Seconds appreciated. I propose the Debian project release the following statement on the GFDL: Proposal below seconded. = Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main -- Context --- Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is that it is not free enough for the Debian distribution. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others. Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section, which does not have such strict requirements. This document covers the GFDL version 1.2, which is the most current version at the time of writing. Earlier versions of the GFDL have similar, related problems. What is the GFDL? - The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation and promote it to others. Notably, it is also used as Wikipedia's license. The GFDL is a copyleft license in that modifications to documentation made under the GFDL must in turn be released under the GFDL, not some more restrictive license. How does the GFDL fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with Debian's traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from GFDL documentation directly into free software. The major conflicts are: Unmodifiable Sections - The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of unmodifiable sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in the future. These are Cover Texts, Dedications, Acknowledgements, and Invariant Sections. Modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. These components create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure that documentation remains accurate and relevant. Transparent Copies -- The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for transparent copies of documentation (that is, a copy of the documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy be made available for a year after the opaque copies are no longer being distributed. For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be sufficient, and that users need not be forced to obtain the source with every copy of the binary they download, but this does not satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements. Digital Rights Management - The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. This inhibits freedom in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a transparent copy of the work; and, as written, it also potentially disallows encrypting the documentation, or even storing it on a system that provides user restrictions or file permissions for the documentation. Why does documentation need to be Free Software? The question of Why does software need free documentation? has been addressed in the past by the Free Software Foundation in the essay _Free Software and Free Manuals_ [0]. [0]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 11:37:37AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: So, I've updated the wiki [0] in response to most of the suggestions on the list so far. Okay, given the lack of further response (except for dato's alternate proposal!), I've tweaked the wording one more time, and I think this is the final version. Seconds appreciated. Seconded. I propose the Debian project release the following statement on the GFDL: = Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main -- Context --- Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is that it is not free enough for the Debian distribution. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others. Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section, which does not have such strict requirements. This document covers the GFDL version 1.2, which is the most current version at the time of writing. Earlier versions of the GFDL have similar, related problems. What is the GFDL? - The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation and promote it to others. Notably, it is also used as Wikipedia's license. The GFDL is a copyleft license in that modifications to documentation made under the GFDL must in turn be released under the GFDL, not some more restrictive license. How does the GFDL fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with Debian's traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from GFDL documentation directly into free software. The major conflicts are: Unmodifiable Sections - The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of unmodifiable sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in the future. These are Cover Texts, Dedications, Acknowledgements, and Invariant Sections. Modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. These components create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure that documentation remains accurate and relevant. Transparent Copies -- The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for transparent copies of documentation (that is, a copy of the documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy be made available for a year after the opaque copies are no longer being distributed. For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be sufficient, and that users need not be forced to obtain the source with every copy of the binary they download, but this does not satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements. Digital Rights Management - The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. This inhibits freedom in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a transparent copy of the work; and, as written, it also potentially disallows encrypting the documentation, or even storing it on a system that provides user restrictions or file permissions for the documentation. Why does documentation need to be Free Software? The question of Why does software need
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
* MJ Ray [Tue, 10 Jan 2006 13:24:52 +]: Also, this fails to address the security ban and the forced Transparent downloads/availability. 'Cause this amendment is not about trying to engage in legal-type discussion about whether those two can be work-arounded or not. It's: we regard these two issues as bugs/misfunctions in the wording of the license, but they're non-RC for us and hence are willing to waive them for main. -- Adeodato Simó dato at net.com.org.es Debian Developer adeodato at debian.org Guy on cell: Yeah, I mean she's not easy to talk to, because, you know, she'll be like, What did you do this weekend? and I'll say, Nothing, but really I was fucking some other girl. -- http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/003179.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Kalle Kivimaa [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Proposal below seconded. It seems that my Gnus settings do not work correctly for most people (including devotee), if I try to send out GPG'd ISO-8859-1 emails. This should be verifiable by all. Seconding the proposal below. = Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main -- Context --- Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is that it is not free enough for the Debian distribution. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others. Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section, which does not have such strict requirements. This document covers the GFDL version 1.2, which is the most current version at the time of writing. Earlier versions of the GFDL have similar, related problems. What is the GFDL? - The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation and promote it to others. Notably, it is also used as Wikipedia's license. The GFDL is a copyleft license in that modifications to documentation made under the GFDL must in turn be released under the GFDL, not some more restrictive license. How does the GFDL fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with Debian's traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from GFDL documentation directly into free software. The major conflicts are: Unmodifiable Sections - The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of unmodifiable sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in the future. These are Cover Texts, Dedications, Acknowledgements, and Invariant Sections. Modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. These components create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure that documentation remains accurate and relevant. Transparent Copies -- The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for transparent copies of documentation (that is, a copy of the documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy be made available for a year after the opaque copies are no longer being distributed. For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be sufficient, and that users need not be forced to obtain the source with every copy of the binary they download, but this does not satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements. Digital Rights Management - The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. This inhibits freedom in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a transparent copy of the work; and, as written, it also potentially disallows encrypting the documentation, or even storing it on a system that provides user restrictions or file permissions for the documentation. Why does documentation need to be Free Software? The question of Why does software need free documentation? has been addressed in the past by the Free Software Foundation in the essay _Free Software and Free Manuals_ [0]. [0] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html There are a number
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
* Anthony Towns [Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:45:19 +1000]: What documents would this effort actually let us keep, anyway? All the FSF stuff for glibc, gcc, make and so on includes invariant sections anyway, no? Right, FSF stuff goes away. OTOH, I feel utterly ashamed each time I imagine the possibility of the following conversation taking place: «Hey, fellow free software developer, thanks for writing such a cool program and releasing it under the GPL! I also see that you wrote excellent manual for it, nice! Uhm, I see it's licensed under the GFDL, why? Oh I see, these FSF folks that created the GPL told you that the GFDL is a reasonable license for documentation, and you fscking trusted them?! Bad move, guy. No unmodifiable sections you say? Bah, you know we in Debian care more about legalese than about being fair to the rest of the community. Errr, are you suggesting that we dishonor our High Levels Of License And Copyright Compliance and allow invariant-less in main? NO WAY MAN, GO AWAY. You can't relicense because lots of people contributed to it, some of whom have passed away? NOT MY PROBLEM. You'll be recommending Ubuntu instead of Debian from now on? HAH!, AS IF I CARE.» (Or in other words: perhaps it's only me, okay, but I can't help, at all, feel that ripping out of main documentation that their authors intended to be free, and made their best-effort to achieve that, like a form of betrayal. Apologies if this offends somebody, but it's the way I feel it, and can't do anything about it.) -- Adeodato Simó dato at net.com.org.es Debian Developer adeodato at debian.org A lie can go round the world before the truth has got its boots on. -- Terry Pratchett signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
* Adeodato Simó [EMAIL PROTECTED] [060112 15:09]: (Or in other words: perhaps it's only me, okay, but I can't help, at all, feel that ripping out of main documentation that their authors intended to be free, and made their best-effort to achieve that, like a form of betrayal. It is a form of betrayal. And this betrayal is on out side. But the betrayal is not that we exclude things out of main someone failed to make free software (we make this with programs most of the time, too), but the betrayal is that we did not inform them before so they could avoid that pitfalls. We (in the form of Debian) knew those problems since short after the GFDL came first up, we did nothing to inform people early due to false hope to get it solved in quiscence easier than confronting. We failed to take the steps early due to our inability to release in a timely manner even without removing/rewriting/relicesing things that slipped in. And in all this time people were trapped into this, partially even with invariant sections or even cover texts, causing real world problems for many. But should we really try to bury that betrayal by betraying our users and our priciples, letting stuff in that we promised not too. Hiding problems our users (and we ourself) will be faced with in the future? Hochachtungsvoll, Bernhard R. Link -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bernhard R. Link [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Adeodato Simó [EMAIL PROTECTED] [060112 15:09]: (Or in other words: perhaps it's only me, okay, but I can't help, at all, feel that ripping out of main documentation that their authors intended to be free, and made their best-effort to achieve that, like a form of betrayal. It is a form of betrayal. And this betrayal is on out side. But the betrayal is not that we exclude things out of main someone failed to make free software (we make this with programs most of the time, too), but the betrayal is that we did not inform them before so they could avoid that pitfalls. We (in the form of Debian) knew those problems since short after the GFDL came first up, we did nothing to inform people early due to false hope to get it solved in quiscence easier than confronting. We did do something about it. About a year before the release of Sarge, I discussed the GFDL issues with all my upstreams using GFDL manuals including Manoj's draft Position Statement, and I was hardly the only one doing this. The problems have been brought to public attention several times since the GFDL came into being, so people using the licence are likely to be at least peripherally aware of the issues. While it's true that we have tried to get it solved quietly, it's not true to say that we collectively did nothing. Regards, Roger - -- Roger Leigh Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/ Debian GNU/Linuxhttp://www.debian.org/ GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848. Please sign and encrypt your mail. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8+ http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/ iD8DBQFDxomgVcFcaSW/uEgRAiasAKC+GqAmZLlt0uEg9coPMw6ITNJ3dQCg3VtG 3rYgVVUU9uAgDT5QSDac4OI= =STVn -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Russ Allbery wrote: Well, that's a reason to second an amendment that says that the GFDL *is* DFSG-free, so that it's explicitly a choice, and so that a vote for more discussion is clearly not a vote for that position. However, what's kept me from seconding such a proposal for exactly this reason is that I keep seeing problems with how to phrase it, since just saying it's DFSG-free without addressing the contradictions between it and the DFSG isn't really a solution and results in a very unclear interpretation. I wonder if such a statement would essentially have to be a modification of the DFSG to add a special case for the GFDL. In my opinion, as I already mentioned in -private, this is the case. Otherwise any software, no matter how non-free, could conceivably be voted into main by a General Resolution that received a simple majority. So I think that an amendment to explicitly permit GFDL-licensed materials in main would require a 3:1 supermajority to pass, as stated in http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution Section 4.1, bullet points 5.2 and 5.3. I guess that the decision of whether to require a 3:1 supermajority or only a normal majority on such an amendment would be left up to the secretary? - -- Kevin B. McCarty [EMAIL PROTECTED] Physics Department WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/Princeton University GPG: public key ID 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDxpsjfYxAIk+Dx1ERAvo8AKCpBr+Z5F4N3cqmJ1iAgZyLQ5XRjQCcDUEI kq1K44bCaQ4DpSLd+ew+Fq4= =p95r -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 03:06:49PM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote: * Anthony Towns [Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:45:19 +1000]: What documents would this effort actually let us keep, anyway? All the FSF stuff for glibc, gcc, make and so on includes invariant sections anyway, no? Right, FSF stuff goes away. OTOH, I feel utterly ashamed each time I imagine the possibility of the following conversation taking place: «Hey, fellow free software developer, thanks for writing such a cool program and releasing it under the GPL! I also see that you wrote excellent manual for it, nice! Uhm, I see it's licensed under the GFDL, why? Oh I see, these FSF folks that created the GPL told you that the GFDL is a reasonable license for documentation, and you fscking trusted them?! I would feel bad about that too, and I'd say that. But my next move would be to explain _why_ the GFDL is not free, rather than to laugh at them for thinking it is free. -- .../ -/ ---/ .--./ / .--/ .-/ .../ -/ ../ -./ --./ / -.--/ ---/ ..-/ .-./ / -/ ../ --/ ./ / .--/ ../ -/ / / -../ ./ -.-./ ---/ -../ ../ -./ --./ / --/ -.--/ / .../ ../ --./ -./ .-/ -/ ..-/ .-./ ./ .-.-.-/ / --/ ---/ .-./ .../ ./ / ../ .../ / ---/ ..-/ -/ -../ .-/ -/ ./ -../ / -/ ./ -.-./ / -./ ---/ .-../ ---/ --./ -.--/ / .-/ -./ -.--/ .--/ .-/ -.--/ .-.-.-/ / ...-.-/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Adeodato Simó, 2006-01-12 15:10:40 +0100 : [...] (Or in other words: perhaps it's only me, okay, but I can't help, at all, feel that ripping out of main documentation that their authors intended to be free, and made their best-effort to achieve that, like a form of betrayal. Apologies if this offends somebody, but it's the way I feel it, and can't do anything about it.) I tend to have another view. Debian is well-known for its strict adherence to principles of freedom, so distributing something in main carries a message that our users are free to use it under terms which are *at least* as permissive as what the DFSG specifies. Having invariant sections (or any other non-free stuff) in main could be seen as a betrayal of the people who chose the license. Roland. -- Roland Mas Why did the elephant cross the road? Because it was the chicken's day off.
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
I second the proposal quoted below. I'm following debian-vote through the archives, so if you wish to reply or comment to me specifically, CC me. Christopher Martin On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 04:55:43AM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote: Debian and the GNU Free Documentation License = This is the position of Debian Project about the GNU Free Documentation License as published by the Free Software Foundation: 1. We consider that the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, explained in detail in the Problems of the GFDL section below. The most grave of these problems are the so-called invariant sections, which are non-removable, non-modifiable parts of the document that the GFDL allows in works under this license. However, modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, so this restriction is not acceptable for us. 2. We believe that works licensed under the GFDL that include no such unmodifiable sections do fully meet the spirit of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and have a place in our distribution despite the other problems (minor, in comparison) that the GFDL has. Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. 3. Despite the compromise above, GFDL'd documentation is still not free of trouble: as an example, it is incompatible with the major free software licenses, which means that GFDL'd text can't be incorporated into free programs. For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license their works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under a well known free software license like the the GPL or the BSD license. Problems of the GFDL I. 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: (a) It is not limited to the act of distribution (i.e., it applies to private copies as well). (b) 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. (c) 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. II. 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. 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. III. Invariant Sections This is the most troublesome part of the GFDL. The GNU FDL includes a number of conditions that apply to all modified versions that disallow modifications. Specifically, Section 4 of the GFDL describes the invariant sections that must be unaltered in their text and in their titles in any derived works. These invariant sections must be secondary sections; a secondary section is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 08:53:04PM +0100, Roland Mas wrote: Having invariant sections (or any other non-free stuff) in main could be seen as a betrayal of the people who chose the license. This is not about invariant sections. This is about the other bugs in the GFDL the FSF has not fixed (yet?) and ignoring them for one more release. Michael -- Michael Banck Debian Developer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.advogato.org/person/mbanck/diary.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Le Jeu 12 Janvier 2006 22:28, Christopher Martin a écrit : I second the proposal quoted below. and I do the same. On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 04:55:43AM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote: Debian and the GNU Free Documentation License = This is the position of Debian Project about the GNU Free Documentation License as published by the Free Software Foundation: 1. We consider that the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, explained in detail in the Problems of the GFDL section below. The most grave of these problems are the so-called invariant sections, which are non-removable, non-modifiable parts of the document that the GFDL allows in works under this license. However, modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, so this restriction is not acceptable for us. 2. We believe that works licensed under the GFDL that include no such unmodifiable sections do fully meet the spirit of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and have a place in our distribution despite the other problems (minor, in comparison) that the GFDL has. Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. 3. Despite the compromise above, GFDL'd documentation is still not free of trouble: as an example, it is incompatible with the major free software licenses, which means that GFDL'd text can't be incorporated into free programs. For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license their works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under a well known free software license like the the GPL or the BSD license. Problems of the GFDL I. 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: (a) It is not limited to the act of distribution (i.e., it applies to private copies as well). (b) 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. (c) 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. II. 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. 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. III. Invariant Sections This is the most troublesome part of the GFDL. The GNU FDL includes a number of conditions that apply to all modified versions that disallow modifications. Specifically, Section 4 of the GFDL describes the invariant sections that must be unaltered in their text and in their titles in any derived works. These invariant sections must be secondary sections; a secondary section is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
also sprach Adeodato Simó [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2006.01.10.0455 +0100]: Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. I'm a late entry to the thread, please excuse. If we kicked all GFDL out of main, how many upstreams would reconsider their choice of licence? None? Few? Some? Many? I am - that short of seconding dato's proposal, but I believe that Debian is also in a position to make the world a better place by asking upstreams to rethink. Or am I being completely naïve here? -- Please do not send copies of list mail to me; I read the list! .''`. martin f. krafft [EMAIL PROTECTED] : :' :proud Debian developer and author: http://debiansystem.info `. `'` `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing a system Invalid/expired PGP (sub)keys? Use subkeys.pgp.net as keyserver! gilmour's guitar sounds good whether you've got a bottle of cider in your hand or a keyboard and a mouse. -- prof. bruce maxwell signature.asc Description: Digital signature (GPG/PGP)
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
martin f krafft wrote: also sprach Adeodato Simó [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2006.01.10.0455 +0100]: Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. I'm a late entry to the thread, please excuse. If we kicked all GFDL out of main, how many upstreams would reconsider their choice of licence? None? Few? Some? Many? I am - that short of seconding dato's proposal, but I believe that Debian is also in a position to make the world a better place by asking upstreams to rethink. Or am I being completely naïve here? You can second a proposal without voting for it if you just want to have it on the ballot! Cheers Luk -- Luk Claes - http://people.debian.org/~luk - GPG key 1024D/9B7C328D Fingerprint: D5AF 25FB 316B 53BB 08E7 F999 E544 DE07 9B7C 328D signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Le Ven 13 Janvier 2006 00:09, martin f krafft a écrit : also sprach Adeodato Simó [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2006.01.10.0455 +0100]: Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. I'm a late entry to the thread, please excuse. If we kicked all GFDL out of main, how many upstreams would reconsider their choice of licence? None? Few? Some? Many? The QT-KDE Team has contacted KDE people about the GFDL issue, and the answer has been very polite. I'll quote it here : There are no invariant sections in *any* KDE documentation. There are no Front-Cover texts, and there are no Back-Cover texts. *ALL* our documentation that uses the FDL is licensed under the following terms: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License. (as you can see here, as an example, the first doc I come across) http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdebase/kxkb/ln-id2481641.html If you can find a specific example where this is not the case, please let me know, and I will sort it out. 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? 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. -- Lauri Watts [EMAIL PROTECTED] (KDE) Of course, we answered to his questions about the issues of GFDL and the possibility to use a BSD-style license for *new* documentation. Though, the last part of his mail is the one that has to be understood fully : relicensing of the KDE documentation is just *not humanly possible*. And since the licensing terms allow us to chose any version of the GFDL = 1.1, I still hope that the transparent and DRM problems could be solved in a later version. I am - that short of seconding dato's proposal, but I believe that Debian is also in a position to make the world a better place by asking upstreams to rethink. Or am I being completely naïve here? Well, it's true that we could make some upstreams rethink, but it's also a fact that KDE, GNOME, or such projects won't be able to do such an effort. And taking that documentation away, may make the world a worse place for users that need that documentation. And please, I don't want to see answers saying that the documentation can be put in non-free, because, due the the debian policy, `kde` meta-package (same is true for gnome) beeing in main, cannot depend upon the non free kde docs (since that would make it live in contrib, which is IMHO not an option). So that means that unaware users won't have the docs installed when the 'apt-get install kde' (or aptitude install gnome, or dselect whatever). Given the fact that I really think that users that would need applications manuals the most, are often the one that are the most unaware of debian packaging considerations, we would just have a lot of users, desperately pushing their [F1] key, without seeing anything coming. While the Invariant parts *is* really problematic, the DRM and transparent copies things are really a small detail, compared to the suffering of the user that desperately try to configure his browser to use the god**m proxy without the doc ``that the debian guru didn't packaged because after all it's on the net''. Of course I'm exaggerating, but really .. what is simpler ? hitting [F1] (or Help - Contents) ? or trying to find the fscking upstream page of a project that have the brilliant idea to be named after an english word, so that google won't be able to help us to find that fscking page before the 23094th result ? you can also read about it in my recent blog post about it [1] [1] http://blog.madism.org/index.php/2006/01/12/48-gfdl-the-license-that-sks -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O[EMAIL PROTECTED] OOOhttp://www.madism.org pgpcVCDrKowdi.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 04:55:43AM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote: I propose an amendment to this GR, consisting in replacing the existing text with the one below. I initially tried to follow Seconded. Hamish ---8--- Debian and the GNU Free Documentation License = This is the position of Debian Project about the GNU Free Documentation License as published by the Free Software Foundation: 1. We consider that the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, explained in detail in the Problems of the GFDL section below. The most grave of these problems are the so-called invariant sections, which are non-removable, non-modifiable parts of the document that the GFDL allows in works under this license. However, modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, so this restriction is not acceptable for us. 2. We believe that works licensed under the GFDL that include no such unmodifiable sections do fully meet the spirit of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and have a place in our distribution despite the other problems (minor, in comparison) that the GFDL has. Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. 3. Despite the compromise above, GFDL'd documentation is still not free of trouble: as an example, it is incompatible with the major free software licenses, which means that GFDL'd text can't be incorporated into free programs. For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license their works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under a well known free software license like the the GPL or the BSD license. Problems of the GFDL I. 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: (a) It is not limited to the act of distribution (i.e., it applies to private copies as well). (b) 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. (c) 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. II. 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. 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. III. Invariant Sections This is the most troublesome part of the GFDL. The GNU FDL includes a number of conditions that apply to all modified versions that disallow modifications. Specifically, Section 4 of the GFDL describes the invariant sections that must be unaltered in their text and in their titles in any derived works. These invariant sections must be secondary sections;
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 09:53:43PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 11:37:37AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: So, I've updated the wiki [0] in response to most of the suggestions on the list so far. Okay, given the lack of further response (except for dato's alternate proposal!), I've tweaked the wording one more time, and I think this is the final version. Seconds appreciated. So, we've had five seconds making this a formal proposal: Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Kalle Kivimaa [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Roger Leigh [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dato's alternate proposal (which for the record I don't accept as an replacement of the original, which thus means it will be a separate option on the ballot if it receives sufficient seconds) has received three so far by my count: Christopher Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-Id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pierre Habouzit [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-Id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hamish Moffatt [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
On Fri, Jan 13, 2006 at 12:33:36AM +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote: And please, I don't want to see answers saying that the documentation can be put in non-free, because, due the the debian policy, `kde` meta-package (same is true for gnome) beeing in main, cannot depend upon the non free kde docs (since that would make it live in contrib, which is IMHO not an option). Dependencies aren't the only way of getting things installed; Enhances: fields and Task: fields allow things to be automatically selected only if the user's indicated they're happy to have non-free software installed, eg. We've got just under a year to improve our tools to cope with that properly before our next release, and make sure that: So that means that unaware users won't have the docs installed when the 'apt-get install kde' (or aptitude install gnome, or dselect whatever). ...is not the case. (Note that the Task:-style setup beats the Depends: setup for metapackages because it means that when one of the packages in the grouping breaks, the grouping can continue to function even after the RMs pull the broken package out of testing) Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Seconded. On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 04:55:43AM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote: Debian and the GNU Free Documentation License = This is the position of Debian Project about the GNU Free Documentation License as published by the Free Software Foundation: 1. We consider that the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, explained in detail in the Problems of the GFDL section below. The most grave of these problems are the so-called invariant sections, which are non-removable, non-modifiable parts of the document that the GFDL allows in works under this license. However, modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, so this restriction is not acceptable for us. 2. We believe that works licensed under the GFDL that include no such unmodifiable sections do fully meet the spirit of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and have a place in our distribution despite the other problems (minor, in comparison) that the GFDL has. Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. 3. Despite the compromise above, GFDL'd documentation is still not free of trouble: as an example, it is incompatible with the major free software licenses, which means that GFDL'd text can't be incorporated into free programs. For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license their works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under a well known free software license like the the GPL or the BSD license. Problems of the GFDL I. 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: (a) It is not limited to the act of distribution (i.e., it applies to private copies as well). (b) 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. (c) 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. II. 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. 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. III. Invariant Sections This is the most troublesome part of the GFDL. The GNU FDL includes a number of conditions that apply to all modified versions that disallow modifications. Specifically, Section 4 of the GFDL describes the invariant sections that must be unaltered in their text and in their titles in any derived works. These invariant sections must be secondary sections; a secondary section is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
Adeodato Sim=C3=B3 Formally, the Debian Project will include in the main section of its distribution works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no Invariant Sections, no Cover Texts, no Acknowledgements, and no Dedications, unless permission to remove them is granted. Section 4 creates other sections which are restricted-modification. Should there be permission to remove those too? Also, this fails to address the security ban and the forced Transparent downloads/availability. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 11:37:37AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: So, I've updated the wiki [0] in response to most of the suggestions on the list so far. Okay, given the lack of further response (except for dato's alternate proposal!), I've tweaked the wording one more time, and I think this is the final version. Seconds appreciated. I propose the Debian project release the following statement on the GFDL: = Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main -- Context --- Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is that it is not free enough for the Debian distribution. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others. Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section, which does not have such strict requirements. This document covers the GFDL version 1.2, which is the most current version at the time of writing. Earlier versions of the GFDL have similar, related problems. What is the GFDL? - The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation and promote it to others. Notably, it is also used as Wikipedia's license. The GFDL is a copyleft license in that modifications to documentation made under the GFDL must in turn be released under the GFDL, not some more restrictive license. How does the GFDL fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with Debian's traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from GFDL documentation directly into free software. The major conflicts are: Unmodifiable Sections - The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of unmodifiable sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in the future. These are Cover Texts, Dedications, Acknowledgements, and Invariant Sections. Modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. These components create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure that documentation remains accurate and relevant. Transparent Copies -- The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for transparent copies of documentation (that is, a copy of the documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy be made available for a year after the opaque copies are no longer being distributed. For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be sufficient, and that users need not be forced to obtain the source with every copy of the binary they download, but this does not satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements. Digital Rights Management - The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. This inhibits freedom in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a transparent copy of the work; and, as written, it also potentially disallows encrypting the documentation, or even storing it on a system that provides user restrictions or file permissions for the documentation. Why does documentation need to be Free Software? The question of Why does software need free documentation? has been addressed in the past by the Free Software Foundation in the essay _Free Software and Free Manuals_ [0]. [0] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html There
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I second the proposal quoted below. Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main -- Context --- Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is that it is not free enough for the Debian distribution. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others. Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section, which does not have such strict requirements. This document covers the GFDL version 1.2, which is the most current version at the time of writing. Earlier versions of the GFDL have similar, related problems. What is the GFDL? - The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation and promote it to others. Notably, it is also used as Wikipedia's license. The GFDL is a copyleft license in that modifications to documentation made under the GFDL must in turn be released under the GFDL, not some more restrictive license. How does the GFDL fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with Debian's traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from GFDL documentation directly into free software. The major conflicts are: Unmodifiable Sections - The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of unmodifiable sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in the future. These are Cover Texts, Dedications, Acknowledgements, and Invariant Sections. Modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. These components create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure that documentation remains accurate and relevant. Transparent Copies -- The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for transparent copies of documentation (that is, a copy of the documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy be made available for a year after the opaque copies are no longer being distributed. For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be sufficient, and that users need not be forced to obtain the source with every copy of the binary they download, but this does not satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements. Digital Rights Management - The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. This inhibits freedom in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a transparent copy of the work; and, as written, it also potentially disallows encrypting the documentation, or even storing it on a system that provides user restrictions or file permissions for the documentation. Why does documentation need to be Free Software? The question of Why does software need free documentation? has been addressed in the past by the Free Software Foundation in the essay _Free Software and Free Manuals_ [0]. [0] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html There are a number of obvious differences between programs and documentation that often inspire people to ask why not simply have different standards for the two? For example, books are often written by individuals, while programs are written by teams, so proper credit for a
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: Okay, given the lack of further response (except for dato's alternate proposal!), I've tweaked the wording one more time, and I think this is the final version. Seconds appreciated. I propose the Debian project release the following statement on the GFDL: I agree completely with this statement, and of course if it proceeds to vote, will vote for it unless something even better comes along (which I think is unlikely). However, one thing gives me pause: if this goes to a vote, and the vote is no, then what? Some will interpret that as an official statement by the Project that the GFDL does not violate the DFSG. Sure, they will be wrong, but that doesn't stop people. :) Is there another way we can proceed? We have not in the past felt it necessary to issue official statements like this about non-DFSG licenses; why the exception in this particular case? Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 09:53:43PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 11:37:37AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: So, I've updated the wiki [0] in response to most of the suggestions on the list so far. Okay, given the lack of further response (except for dato's alternate proposal!), I've tweaked the wording one more time, and I think this is the final version. Seconds appreciated. I propose the Debian project release the following statement on the GFDL: Seconded. Cheers, -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ = Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main -- Context --- Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is that it is not free enough for the Debian distribution. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others. Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section, which does not have such strict requirements. This document covers the GFDL version 1.2, which is the most current version at the time of writing. Earlier versions of the GFDL have similar, related problems. What is the GFDL? - The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation and promote it to others. Notably, it is also used as Wikipedia's license. The GFDL is a copyleft license in that modifications to documentation made under the GFDL must in turn be released under the GFDL, not some more restrictive license. How does the GFDL fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with Debian's traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from GFDL documentation directly into free software. The major conflicts are: Unmodifiable Sections - The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of unmodifiable sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in the future. These are Cover Texts, Dedications, Acknowledgements, and Invariant Sections. Modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. These components create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure that documentation remains accurate and relevant. Transparent Copies -- The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for transparent copies of documentation (that is, a copy of the documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy be made available for a year after the opaque copies are no longer being distributed. For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be sufficient, and that users need not be forced to obtain the source with every copy of the binary they download, but this does not satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements. Digital Rights Management - The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. This inhibits freedom in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a transparent copy of the work; and, as written, it also potentially disallows encrypting the documentation, or even storing it on
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: However, one thing gives me pause: if this goes to a vote, and the vote is no, then what? Some will interpret that as an official statement by the Project that the GFDL does not violate the DFSG. Sure, they will be wrong, but that doesn't stop people. :) Is there another way we can proceed? We have not in the past felt it necessary to issue official statements like this about non-DFSG licenses; why the exception in this particular case? Well, that's a reason to second an amendment that says that the GFDL *is* DFSG-free, so that it's explicitly a choice, and so that a vote for more discussion is clearly not a vote for that position. However, what's kept me from seconding such a proposal for exactly this reason is that I keep seeing problems with how to phrase it, since just saying it's DFSG-free without addressing the contradictions between it and the DFSG isn't really a solution and results in a very unclear interpretation. I wonder if such a statement would essentially have to be a modification of the DFSG to add a special case for the GFDL. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 06:06:42PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: However, one thing gives me pause: if this goes to a vote, and the vote is no, then what? The vote can't be no; at the moment it can either be The GFDL isn't suitable for main for these reasons (unmodifiable, transparent, drm) or Further discussion -- neither of which are no. Is there another way we can proceed? We have not in the past felt it necessary to issue official statements like this about non-DFSG licenses; why the exception in this particular case? We have: http://www.debian.org/News/1998/19981008 Why do it especially for this? Becuase licenses from the FSF have a great deal of respect in the community, so the community deserves an explanation if we're going to treat one of them as non-free. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
* Anthony Towns [Tue, 10 Jan 2006 16:24:47 +1000]:
On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 04:55:43AM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote:
II. 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).
The way we distribute source and binaries doesn't meet this requirement;
so allowing this seems like it implies a pretty serious change to
how we manage source, one way or another. The way things works at the
moment, we'd have to interpret that as a prohibition (for our purposes)
on distributing compiled GFDL docs, which presumably would (for our
purposes) violate the must allow distribution in ... compiled form
requirement of the DFSG.
Well, this assuming that distributing the source in the same directory
as the compiled form does not satisfy the gfdl's along with (I'm
sure some -legal person will be able to teach me proper English); but
if this is the case, I don't understand why the same distribution
method does magically not infringe the license terms if the section is
non-free as oppsed to main ('cause stuff in non-free has to be at
least legally distributable by us).
IOW, why does this matter for main and not for non-free?
(And if determined that it's not okay, then one can go with the or
state in or with each Opaque copy a [...] location [...] to download
[...] protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document clause.
I'd say a maintainer is taking take reasonably prudent steps if they
include in debian/copyright (1) the upstream url, (2) the url for
ftp.d.o:/pool/sourcepkg, (3) an url for archive.d.o, (4) an url for
snapshot.d.n.)
Cheers,
--
Adeodato Simó dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer adeodato at debian.org
Listening to: Ana Belén - Puerto viejo
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Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
quote who=Alexander (Sasha) Wait date=Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 06:15:18PM -0500 That pipeline will almost certainly be GFDL/CC-BY-SA. It's really sad to see blood boil over these licenses. Since I am talking to people at FSF CC regularly, I would be more than happy to bring Debian concerns to both groups in a, hopefuly, productive fashion.If there's a desire for that, just get in touch with me. Thanks for the offer but I don't think the issue is a real lack of understanding between FSF, CC and Debian. There are officially delegated and long term conversations between Debian and both CC and FSF. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mako.cc/
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 02:42:00AM +0100, Adeodato Sim?? wrote:
* Anthony Towns [Tue, 10 Jan 2006 16:24:47 +1000]:
II. Transparent And Opaque Copies
The way we distribute source and binaries doesn't meet this requirement;
Well, this assuming that distributing the source in the same directory
as the compiled form does not satisfy the gfdl's along with (I'm
sure some -legal person will be able to teach me proper English);
It's not the along with, it's the include .. with each opaque
copy. Having a separate file on the archive doesn't include the source
with the binaries. Maybe that's ambiguous though, in which case an
indication from an FSF lawyer of the correct interpretation should
be fine.
but
if this is the case, I don't understand why the same distribution
method does magically not infringe the license terms if the section is
non-free as oppsed to main ('cause stuff in non-free has to be at
least legally distributable by us).
Because in non-free, we'll jump through whatever hoops are necessary
-- whether that be getting Debian-specific permission, only letting
some particular authorised maintainers build debs, only distributing
official binaries, not autobuilding, whatever.
(And if determined that it's not okay, then one can go with the or
state in or with each Opaque copy a [...] location [...] to download
[...] protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document clause.
I'd say a maintainer is taking take reasonably prudent steps if they
include in debian/copyright (1) the upstream url, (2) the url for
ftp.d.o:/pool/sourcepkg, (3) an url for archive.d.o, (4) an url for
snapshot.d.n.)
The upstream url doesn't include any Debian changes, source files in
the pool don't stay around for a week after the debs are gone let alone
a year, and archive.debian.org only includes the last stable release
of software, not stuff that's uploaded to unstable but is removed from
the archive before being released, eg. I don't think snapshot.d.n is
reliable enough to rely on for license terms; for instance it's currently
supposedly missing about a year's worth of data between 2004/02/27 and
2005/03/12.
The morgue on ftp-master, which includes debs and sources going back to
July is about 175G (ie, the size of the archive again), six months of
the 2004 morgue (2004-02 to 2004-07) that happens to only include source
makes up 16G; so a year's archive (the GFDL's term) could be up to 50G,
while three year's source archives (the GPL's term) would probably be up
to 200G. It's probably /possible/ to do that, but it seems like a fair
bit of work to maintain reliably (which would detract from time spent
doing work actually necessary to release), and it seems like we ought to
have that work done first before saying GFDL stuff should just include
a link to /blah/.
What documents would this effort actually let us keep, anyway? All the
FSF stuff for glibc, gcc, make and so on includes invariant sections
anyway, no?
Cheers,
aj
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Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On 1/10/06, Benj. Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: quote who=Alexander (Sasha) Wait date=Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 06:15:18PM -0500 That pipeline will almost certainly be GFDL/CC-BY-SA. It's really sad to see blood boil over these licenses. Since I am talking to people at FSF CC regularly, I would be more than happy to bring Debian concerns to both groups in a, hopefuly, productive fashion.If there's a desire for that, just get in touch with me. Thanks for the offer but I don't think the issue is a real lack of understanding between FSF, CC and Debian. There are officially delegated and long term conversations between Debian and both CC and FSF. I look forward to seeing compatibility between GFDL and CC-BY-SA. It's even better to hear that both of these will be DFSG compliant! Thanks, Sasha -- http://freelogy.org/wiki/User:AlexanderWait (GnuPG ID 4153C516)
Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
* Anthony Towns [Sun, 01 Jan 2006 15:02:04 +1000]: It's been six months since the social contract changes that forbid non-free documentation went into effect [0], and we're still distributing GFDLed stuff in unstable [1]. I think we should get serious about fixing that, and as part of that that we should release the following statement (or one like it) on the GFDL: --- Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main ~~ (0) Summary Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is no. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others, and Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section. (1) What is the GFDL? The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation, and promote it to others. It is also used as Wikipedia's license. To quote the GFDL's Preamble: The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of copyleft, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software. (2) How does it fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from a documention directly into free software under the GFDL. The major conflicts are: (2.1) Invariant Sections The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of invariant sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in future. Modifiability is, however, a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Invariant sections create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure the documentation remains accurate and relevant. (2.2) Transparent Copies The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for transparent copies of documentation (that is, a copy of the documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy is made available for a year after the opaque copies are no longer being distributed. For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be sufficient, but this does not satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements. (2.3) Digital Rights Management The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. This inhibits freedom in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a transparent copy of the work; and, as written, it also potentially disallows encrypting the documentation, or even storing it on a filesystem that supports permissions. (3) Why does documentation need to be Free Software? There are a number of obvious differences between programs and documentation that often inspire people to ask why not simply have different standards for the two? For example, books are often written by individuals, while programs are written by teams, so proper credit for a book might be more important than proper credit for a program. On the other hand, free software is often
Re: Amendment: invariant-less in main (Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement)
On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 04:55:43AM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote: I propose an amendment to this GR, consisting in replacing the existing text with the one below. (The purpose being to indicate the GFDL only needs to be in non-free due to invariant sections. This would be nice if it were true; it's not clear to me that it is though) Problems of the GFDL It'd seem like a good idea to split it into why the GFDL is non-free and other problems of the GFDL that ought to be fixed, but don't really bother us. I. The DRM Restriction (c) 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. If we're taking this literally, this seems to make it non-free to me by restricting how it can actually be used. I guess I'm not personally opposed to just pretending it doesn't exist, but... II. 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). The way we distribute source and binaries doesn't meet this requirement; so allowing this seems like it implies a pretty serious change to how we manage source, one way or another. The way things works at the moment, we'd have to interpret that as a prohibition (for our purposes) on distributing compiled GFDL docs, which presumably would (for our purposes) violate the must allow distribution in ... compiled form requirement of the DFSG. Changing the way things work at the moment isn't necessarily out of the question, but seems a lot of hassle when it won't save the FSF GFDL docs that usually do include invariant sections anyway. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 06:15:18PM -0500, Alexander (Sasha) Wait wrote: I hate proprietary academic publishing, so, I'd like to see a pipeline from Academic Wikis to Academic Journals to Wikipedia. That pipeline will almost certainly be GFDL/CC-BY-SA. It's really sad to see blood boil over these licenses. Since I am talking to people at FSF CC regularly, I would be more than happy to bring Debian concerns to both groups in a, hopefuly, productive fashion.If there's a desire for that, just get in touch with me. We've already talked to CC and they agreed to fix their licenses; 3.0 and later should be fine, when they're released (2.x never will be). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On 1/7/06, Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We've already talked to CC and they agreed to fix their licenses; 3.0 and later should be fine, when they're released (2.x never will be). Well - it's a goal for CC FSF to permit content to move freely between CC-BY-SA and GFDL (or possibly simplified GFDL). I'm happy to help with that as an academic customer of these licenses that would like to ensure the final result is usable by Debian. I see the relevant people at CC FSF fairly regularly. just let me know if I can help... Sasha -- http://freelogy.org/wiki/User:AlexanderWait (GnuPG ID 4153C516)
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 09:17:24PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote a message of 19 lines which said: I think -legal came to a very definite consensus that licensing the documentation under the exact same license as the program was always the right thing to do. I agree. In some countries (I checked for France), it is the default (the documentation of a software is regarded as software). It saves *so* much trouble. But not all documentation is attached to a software. For instance, if I write a book Software development on Debian, releasing it under the GFDL is still the reasonable thing to do. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 10:34:46AM +0100, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote: It saves *so* much trouble. But not all documentation is attached to a software. For instance, if I write a book Software development on Debian, releasing it under the GFDL is still the reasonable thing to do. Not if you want it to be part of Debian. -- .../ -/ ---/ .--./ / .--/ .-/ .../ -/ ../ -./ --./ / -.--/ ---/ ..-/ .-./ / -/ ../ --/ ./ / .--/ ../ -/ / / -../ ./ -.-./ ---/ -../ ../ -./ --./ / --/ -.--/ / .../ ../ --./ -./ .-/ -/ ..-/ .-./ ./ .-.-.-/ / --/ ---/ .-./ .../ ./ / ../ .../ / ---/ ..-/ -/ -../ .-/ -/ ./ -../ / -/ ./ -.-./ / -./ ---/ .-../ ---/ --./ -.--/ / .-/ -./ -.--/ .--/ .-/ -.--/ .-.-.-/ / ...-.-/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 12:08:23PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote a message of 15 lines which said: I write a book Software development on Debian, releasing it under the GFDL is still the reasonable thing to do. Not if you want it to be part of Debian. It still works for the rest of the world which is large enough for my Wikipedia contributions (GFDL) and my lectures (GFDL too). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Stephane Bortzmeyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] But not all documentation is attached to a software. For instance, if I write a book Software development on Debian, releasing it under the GFDL is still the reasonable thing to do. It's reasonable if you want to attach adverts to it and allow others to do so, while witholding the freedom to edit or remove those adverts. If one wants to forbid all changes, then releasing under a CC-nd licence is a reasonable action. Not free software, though, which is what this list usually likes and a free software operating system should have free software manuals. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On 1/5/06, MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Stephane Bortzmeyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] But not all documentation is attached to a software. For instance, if I write a book Software development on Debian, releasing it under the GFDL is still the reasonable thing to do. It's reasonable if you want to attach adverts to it and allow others to do so, while witholding the freedom to edit or remove those adverts. If one wants to forbid all changes, then releasing under a CC-nd licence is. a reasonable action. Not free software, though, which is what this list usually likes and a free software operating system should have free software manuals. I've been a Debian user for eight years. I can count on one hand the number of times I've used proprietary software in all of that time; well, unless you count helping people out by answering their (MS Windows or MAC OS) questions or looking over their shoulder. I'm also working with Wikipedia, CC, FSF on licensing issues. I'm an academic scientist. I run a 70 processor cluster (Debian stable OpenSSI.) I do synthetic biology. I work on Personal Genomics; my mentor's article about the work is the cover story for January's Scientific American. I hate proprietary academic publishing, so, I'd like to see a pipeline from Academic Wikis to Academic Journals to Wikipedia. That pipeline will almost certainly be GFDL/CC-BY-SA. It's really sad to see blood boil over these licenses. Since I am talking to people at FSF CC regularly, I would be more than happy to bring Debian concerns to both groups in a, hopefuly, productive fashion.If there's a desire for that, just get in touch with me. Thanks, and Happy New Year, Sasha PS. I'm often on AIM/Google Talk as alexanderwait and or Freenode as asw or await. -- http://freelogy.org/wiki/User:AlexanderWait (GnuPG ID 4153 C516)
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 06:15:18PM -0500, Alexander (Sasha) Wait wrote: It's really sad to see blood boil over these licenses. Since I am talking to people at FSF CC regularly, I would be more than happy to bring Debian concerns to both groups in a, hopefuly, productive fashion.If there's a desire for that, just get in touch with me. Thanks for your offer. Mako Hill and Don Armstrong have been talking to the FSF in that matter for some time now, I suggest you contact them first to discuss whether this is likely to be of good use. cheers, Michael -- Michael Banck Debian Developer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.advogato.org/person/mbanck/diary.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 09:37:32AM +, MJ Ray wrote: [3] http://wiki.debian.org/GFDLPositionStatement That page says it is immutable. You need to log in. Cheers, aj -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 03:02:04PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: It's based on Manoj's draft position statement [2] with some notable changes (an explicit why not just say docs != software section, a how can this be fixed section, a what is the GFDL? section, and reordering the major problems). I've put the above draft on the wiki [3] so people can tweak it. So, I've updated the wiki [0] in response to most of the suggestions on the list so far. Currently missing are decent explanations why the non-invariant issues are DFSG problems, rather than just annoying; and possibly additional text detailing more of the problems caused by those issues. I see there's some discussion going on in -private too. Petter Reinholdtsen added the following note to the wiki in the section on why documentation should be free: ] This section could use more work, to explain why standard texts, where ] part of the value of a standard text is that it is not changed outside ] the standard process, and also why the difference between programs ] as stored and operational knowledge and documentation as non-operational ] knowledge (you can not execute a book. :) is not sufficient to treat ] text and programs differently. Are there many standards under the GFDL (which is about documentation after all) that this is important to mention? Even if it is, I'm not sure we want to get into the everything must be DFSG free! side of things rather than just the standards aren't crucial enough that they warrant an exception to standards of freedom. Thoughts? Cheers, aj [0] http://wiki.debian.org/GFDLPositionStatement signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Brian May [EMAIL PROTECTED] People tend to ask ... but can I really use a license such as the GPL for documentation? I thought GPL was for software only. Do we need to address this point? I'm not sure. That's covered in the GPL FAQ and should be clear from the definition of Program in the GPL. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
I suggest a few wording changes and additions to avoid some arguments against the statement and to make it a little clearer. I agree with earlier comments about adding the version number. Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is no. s/free license/free software license acceptable for Debian's main archive section/ It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others, and Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section. (1) What is the GFDL? The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation, and promote it to others. It is also used as Wikipedia's license. To quote the GFDL's Preamble: I would be happier not to quote so much of the Preamble. Why promote the FSF view of effective freedom if we disagree? (2) How does it fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from a documention directly into free software under the GFDL. s/traditional requirements for/the traditional definition of/ s/from a documentation/from documentation/ OR s/from a documentation/from GFDL-licensed documentation/ s/GFDL/GPL/ ? The major conflicts are: (2.1) Invariant Sections The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of invariant sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in future. Modifiability is, however, a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works =20 The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Invariant sections create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure the documentation remains accurate and relevant. This doesn't cover the Encyclopedia Problem. I suggest adding: Also, Invariant sections must be Secondary sections and contain nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject (FDL section 1). So, it is possible to prevent reuse of some documentation in other documentation by including an Invariant section which covers part of its topic, and the blocking Invariant section cannot be removed. [...] Unfortunately this alone is not enough, as other clauses of the GFDL render all GFDL documentation non-free. As a consequence, other licenses should be investigated; generally it is probably simplest to choose either the GNU General Public License (for a copyleft license) or the BSD or MIT licenses (for a non-copyleft license). I suggest a small rewording to avoid a GFDL non-free argument and to suggest manuals are put under the program's own licence: Unfortunately this alone is not enough, as other clauses of the GFDL mean that no GFDL'd documentation is free software. So, other licences should be considered: generally it is probably simplest to choose the same licence as the program being documented, the GNU General Public License (for a copyleft license) or a BSD- or MIT/X11-style license (for a non-copyleft license). [...] I've put the above draft on the wiki [3] so people can tweak it. [3] http://wiki.debian.org/GFDLPositionStatement That page says it is immutable. Thanks, -- MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ irc.oftc.net/slef Jabber/SIP ask -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Anthony Towns writes (GR Proposal: GFDL statement): Bcc'ed to -project, -legal and -private; followups to -vote please. It's been six months since the social contract changes that forbid non-free documentation went into effect [0], and we're still distributing GFDLed stuff in unstable [1]. I think we should get serious about fixing that, and as part of that that we should release the following statement (or one like it) on the GFDL: I support this proposal. But, I don't think we go far enough in disputing the need for a separate documentation licence: The GPL-incompatibility of the GFDL is a serious problem. While we're making our point about the GFDL being DFSG-non-free, we should also point out that while if it were made DFSG-free we would (have to) accept it, we would strongly prefer that it simply be abolished. So, I think this section: (3) Why does documentation need to be Free Software? needs to be strengthened. I don't have time right now to write a suggested text I'm afraid. Also, (4) How can this be fixed? This section should be clarified and strengthened. In particular, we should encourage documentation authors to (at the moment) dual-licence GDFL/GPL. And we should tell the FSF that the Debian project would prefer the FSF to drop the GFDL entirely. Also, the summary needs a lot of work. The summary should be good enough that if you only read the summary you get the main points of the article. And it should avoid weaselphrases like `there has been a significant amount of concern' because they just use up space which would be valuable for putting our position. I'll try to write something up today or tomorrow. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Tue, 03 Jan 2006 09:37:32 +, MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I suggest a few wording changes and additions to avoid some arguments against the statement and to make it a little clearer. I agree with earlier comments about adding the version number. Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is no. s/free license/free software license acceptable for Debian's main archive section/ I think this shall only bring up the distraction or arguments of what does one mwna by software. While some of us hold to the view that software is all that is cmputer related and not hardware or wetware. others hold to the narrower definition that software == software programs. That discussion is unlikely to be productive. manoj -- Support Mental Health. Or I'll kill you. Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Ian Jackson wrote: Also, (4) How can this be fixed? This section should be clarified and strengthened. In particular, we should encourage documentation authors to (at the moment) dual-licence GDFL/GPL. The recommendation is: License your documentation under the same license as the program it goes with. If you need to license under the GFDL for some reason, dual-licence. I think -legal came to a very definite consensus that licensing the documentation under the exact same license as the program was always the right thing to do. It saves *so* much trouble. -- ksig --random| -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Anthony Towns wrote: (2.1) Invariant Sections The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of invariant sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in future. Modifiability is, however, a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Invariant sections create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure the documentation remains accurate and relevant. Please note the following: Cover Texts create the same problems as Invariant Sections. -- ksig --random| -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 21:17 -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote: The recommendation is: License your documentation under the same license as the program it goes with. If you need to license under the GFDL for some reason, dual-licence. I think -legal came to a very definite consensus that licensing the documentation under the exact same license as the program was always the right thing to do. It saves *so* much trouble. People tend to ask ... but can I really use a license such as the GPL for documentation? I thought GPL was for software only. Do we need to address this point? -- Brian May [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Florian Weimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This GR effectively overrides decisions by the DPL and his delegates, and should mention this. Which decisions? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 06:17:57PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The release team has spoken, and they decide what goes in a release. If they have decided, under advice from debian-legal, that GFDL docs are RC bugs, then that is that. I've now also found: http://release.debian.org/removing-non-free-documentation which is basically the statement that I had been looking for. Given that, I'm not sure that a GR is really necessary, although I still don't think it could hurt. I'm in favor of a GR because it gives us the means of measuring the consensus within the project about *what* makes this a non-free license; the release team is convinced that it's not a Free Software license, but I'd rather have broad agreement about what *would* make it a free license before we start telling people they need to change. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
No substantive changes suggested, merely matters of style [Anthony Towns] (0) Summary Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is no. As Russ said, it's best to clarify here that you mean the GFDL 1.2. license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from a documention directly into a documention? Perhaps ...from documentation. that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in future. in the future, clearer. suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy is made available Subjunctive police - copy be made available. You got it right earlier in the same sentence. (: In practice, then, documentation simply isn't different enough to warrant different standards: we still wish to provide source code in different standards of freedoms we expect for our users - that is, I think this point is strong enough to be worth stating more forcefully. This seems to be the one major issue that separates Debian from the FSF: I believe they already concede that the GFDL is not a free *software* license. It also seems to be the point most often contested in the GFDL debates. (Well, alongside the perennially popular non- argument, What?!? You dare call a FSF license non-free? Heresy!) An easy first step is to not include the optional invariant sections in your documentation, since they are not required by the license, but are simply an option open to authors. Probably should enumerate the types of invariant sections here - cover texts in particular, and maybe dedications too. (Are those considered bad? since they are removable.) I've put the above draft on the wiki [3] so people can tweak it. [3] http://wiki.debian.org/GFDLPositionStatement Since this has already been seconded as-is here, I thought it best to comment here instead of making random unauthorised edits to a wiki. Even so, I'd second this if I were a Debian developer. Thanks for the GR, AJ, Peter signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
I'd like to propose a few, uh, editorial amendments ;-) On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 03:02:04PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: --- Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main ~~ (0) Summary Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is no. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others, and Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section. I think the statement should contain a reference to current version or version 1.2 and below in the above part. Rationale: even though the text does mention the fact that these problems can be remedied by the FSF by updating the GFDL, it is a fact that a long text is something that not everyone will read head to bottom; those who will read it diagonally might miss this (very important) bit of information, unless it's mentioned in a part of the text that they will most likely not miss, such as the title or a part designated Summary. Perhaps retitle it to Why the current version of the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main (1) What is the GFDL? The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation, and promote it to others. It is also used as Wikipedia's license. To quote the GFDL's Preamble: The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of copyleft, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software. (2) How does it fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from a documention directly into free software under Not sure here (not a native English speaker), but can you say from a documentation? Shouldn't that be either from documentation or from a piece of documentation? the GFDL. The major conflicts are: (2.1) Invariant Sections The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of invariant sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in future. Modifiability is, however, a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Invariant sections create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure the documentation remains accurate and relevant. (2.2) Transparent Copies The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for transparent copies of documentation (that is, a copy of the documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy is made available for a year after the opaque copies are no longer being distributed. For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be sufficient, but this does not satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements. (2.3) Digital Rights Management The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. This inhibits freedom in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 04:25:37AM -0600, Peter Samuelson wrote: No substantive changes suggested, merely matters of style ... Since this has already been seconded as-is here, I thought it best to comment here instead of making random unauthorised edits to a wiki. On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 11:28:16AM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: Perhaps retitle it to Why the current version of the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main Why the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 is not suitable for Debian main is shorter; adding This document refers to version 1.2 of the GFDL. or similar in the beginning could work too. The GFDL conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from a documention directly into free software under Not sure here (not a native English speaker), but can you say from a documentation? Shouldn't that be either from documentation or from a piece of documentation? Or from documentation or from a document, yeah. I've put the above draft on the wiki [3] so people can tweak it. I don't think that's a good idea. There's a fairly strict procedure for GR proposals, with amendments et al. You shouldn't try to work around that. The wiki doesn't work around it -- all GR stuff has to go via -vote or it's irrelevant for procedural purposes; it just means other people can put their changes in directly and the software'll generate pretty colourised diffs automatically. I presume more substantive changes (and hence new seconds) will be needed anyway, fwiw. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 09:51:52PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: [...] On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 11:28:16AM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: Perhaps retitle it to Why the current version of the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main Why the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 is not suitable for Debian main is shorter; Right; I suggested '1.2 or below', but it indeed isn't of any value to refer to versions that've been declared obsolete by the FSF itself anyway. Besides, 'current' isn't very helpful if the FSF decides to bring out another version some time from now. adding This document refers to version 1.2 of the GFDL. or similar in the beginning could work too. Agreed, if by in the beginning you mean in the summary (which I assume you do). [...] I've put the above draft on the wiki [3] so people can tweak it. I don't think that's a good idea. There's a fairly strict procedure for GR proposals, with amendments et al. You shouldn't try to work around that. The wiki doesn't work around it -- all GR stuff has to go via -vote or it's irrelevant for procedural purposes; it just means other people can put their changes in directly and the software'll generate pretty colourised diffs automatically. Okay, as long as that's clear.. -- .../ -/ ---/ .--./ / .--/ .-/ .../ -/ ../ -./ --./ / -.--/ ---/ ..-/ .-./ / -/ ../ --/ ./ / .--/ ../ -/ / / -../ ./ -.-./ ---/ -../ ../ -./ --./ / --/ -.--/ / .../ ../ --./ -./ .-/ -/ ..-/ .-./ ./ .-.-.-/ / --/ ---/ .-./ .../ ./ / ../ .../ / ---/ ..-/ -/ -../ .-/ -/ ./ -../ / -/ ./ -.-./ / -./ ---/ .-../ ---/ --./ -.--/ / .-/ -./ -.--/ .--/ .-/ -.--/ .-.-.-/ / ...-.-/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
I'm confused. Where does it say that we have to go through the GR process to issue a position statement for something the project has already decided on? -- see shy jo signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
* Anthony Towns: Bcc'ed to -project, -legal and -private; followups to -vote please. It's been six months since the social contract changes that forbid non-free documentation went into effect [0], and we're still distributing GFDLed stuff in unstable [1]. I think we should get serious about fixing that, and as part of that that we should release the following statement (or one like it) on the GFDL: This GR effectively overrides decisions by the DPL and his delegates, and should mention this. Apart from that, I've mixed feelings about it. I don't know what's really going on behind the scenes. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm confused. Where does it say that we have to go through the GR process to issue a position statement for something the project has already decided on? How do we know the project has decided on it? http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003 http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_004 Not a flippant question. That's felt like it's been missing from these discussions, and certainly RMS has, in the past, questioned whether the project has really decided on it. debian-legal is not a decision-making body. I agree with your take on the consensus, but I know other people certainly have not. The implication of those two votes is that the Project intends that the 100% of the Debian system must comply with the DFSG. Since it has been proven that the GFDL is not a DFSG-free licence, the consequences are clear. If we do hold a GR over this decision, I won't be voting any differently than I did in either of the above votes; my principles haven't changed since last time I voted. Regards, Roger - -- Roger Leigh Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/ Debian GNU/Linuxhttp://www.debian.org/ GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848. Please sign and encrypt your mail. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8+ http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/ iD8DBQFDuE75VcFcaSW/uEgRAifmAKDpfALDCjuoXuOrG4ooL40UrHQ39ACg0598 sUF8CwibbgqYW1Wpdu8UogU= =4k8S -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Roger Leigh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm confused. Where does it say that we have to go through the GR process to issue a position statement for something the project has already decided on? How do we know the project has decided on it? http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003 http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_004 No, that's not what I'm talking about. The implication of those two votes is that the Project intends that the 100% of the Debian system must comply with the DFSG. Since it has been proven that the GFDL is not a DFSG-free licence, the consequences are clear. This is what I'm talking about. Who has proven that the GFDL is not a DFSG-free license? Where is the project statement that the GFDL is not a DFSG-free license? Again, remember debian-legal is not a decision-making body. What about the Debian developers who have argued in debian-devel that it *is* a DFSG-free license (perhaps under specific circumstances, such as no invariant section use, or invariant sections used only for copyright statements)? I don't disagree with you that it is not a DFSG-free license. I've been convinced by the arguments stated (although *if no invariant sections are used* I think the problems are mistakes in the way the license is phrased rather than any real intent of the license -- not that that makes any difference). But other people clearly have not been, and I think it's important to arrive at some closure on this with an official statement. (Please don't respond to this message by reiterating what you feel is the proof. One, you'd be preaching to the choir, and two, you're unlikely to convince anyone at this point since we've been down that path many times already.) Also, when communicating with upstream, I think it would be very good to have an official statement to point them at if they have any questions. Manoj's current summary is great, but it states pretty clearly that it's a draft and is not a final statement. If we do hold a GR over this decision, I won't be voting any differently than I did in either of the above votes; my principles haven't changed since last time I voted. I don't think anyone is asking you to. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm confused. Where does it say that we have to go through the GR process to issue a position statement for something the project has already decided on? How do we know the project has decided on it? Not a flippant question. That's felt like it's been missing from these discussions, and certainly RMS has, in the past, questioned whether the project has really decided on it. debian-legal is not a decision-making body. I agree with your take on the consensus, but I know other people certainly have not. I suppose the DPL delegate who could speak officially for the project here would be the ftpmasters; is there an official statement about this? I believe the release team has decided that GFDL inclusion in main is RC for the etch release, but I'm not sure where I could find that statement either. I suppose that might be sufficient. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 13:30:32 -0800, Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm confused. Where does it say that we have to go through the GR process to issue a position statement for something the project has already decided on? How do we know the project has decided on it? Not a flippant question. That's felt like it's been missing from these discussions, and certainly RMS has, in the past, questioned whether the project has really decided on it. debian-legal is not a decision-making body. I agree with your take on the consensus, but I know other people certainly have not. I suppose the DPL delegate who could speak officially for the project here would be the ftpmasters; is there an official statement about this? I believe the release team has decided that GFDL inclusion in main is RC for the etch release, but I'm not sure where I could find that statement either. I suppose that might be sufficient. The release team has spoken, and they decide what goes in a release. If they have decided, under advice from debian-legal, that GFDL docs are RC bugs, then that is that. Personally, I doubt that there is any doubt that the GFDL does not satisfy the DFSG. manoj -- Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity? -Ronald Reagan Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Hi, I have taken the liberty of re-adding bits to the position statement I considered important, and I would be happy to hear reasons why they should not be in the position statement we publish. manoj On Sun, 1 Jan 2006 15:02:04 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: - --- Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for - Debian main +Why the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 is not suitable for +Debian main ~~ (0) Summary Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is no. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others. - and +. It merely is meant to clarify that Debian itself does not consider + it free. However, Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section. (1) What is the GFDL? The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation, and promote it to others. It is also used as Wikipedia's license. To quote the GFDL's Preamble: The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of copyleft, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software. (2) How does it fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from a documention directly into free software under the GFDL. The major conflicts are: (2.1) Invariant Sections The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of invariant sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in future. Modifiability is, however, a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Invariant sections create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure the documentation remains accurate and relevant. In addition to the simple restrictions of freedoms imposed by the Invariant Sections, they also cause practical problems: * Incompatibility with the GPL. It's GPL-incompatible in both directions. This means that you can't legally extract text from a GFDL'ed manual and put it into integrated help strings in a GPL'ed program. And you can't extract code or comments from a GPL'ed program and put it into a GFDL'ed manual. (Without getting explicit permission to relicense from every copyright-holding contributor, that is.) * Being forced to retain inaccurate Invariant Sections (or Cover Texts, or Dedications). * Being forced to retain obsolete Invariant Sections (or Cover Texts, or Dedications). Dated invariant sections would exacerbate this problem. * Possibility of obsolescence, via changes in technologies (such as the disappearance of printed matter, or the particulars of file formats and access restrictions). * Being forced to retain technically inappropriate Invariant Sections or Cover Texts, etc. * Being forced to retain Invariant Sections even in extremely space-tight environments (such as a rescue disks, reference card, PDA's, or embedded devices). * Being forced to retain untranslated Invariant Sections in a translation. * Being unable to use material from the document for a new document whose primary topic is that of an Invariant Section (because the Invariant Section must be retained, and must be Secondary, but would no longer be Secondary). This issue, where it can be very difficult or impossible to repurpose chunks (eg copy a chapter about regular
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm confused. Where does it say that we have to go through the GR process to issue a position statement for something the project has already decided on? 4. The Developers by way of General Resolution or election 4.1. Together, the Developers may: 5. Issue, supersede and withdraw nontechnical policy documents and statements. On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 01:30:32PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: I suppose the DPL delegate who could speak officially for the project here would be the ftpmasters; is there an official statement about this? My understanding is that whether ftpmaster is a DPL delegated position or not is also debatable. As per the security team, I'm trying to avoid having an opinion. In any event, the DPL doesn't have any particular right to make statements on behalf of the project anymore, afaics, and I'm not sure delegates could in any case. Maintainers and delegates can presumably make statements about their areas of responsibility, but this is a project wide issue, as it affects things like the wiki [0] as well as just the archive. I note ftpmaster already gets accused of imperial rules and having a fortified post of Project power [1] and other similar garbage, so I'm disinclined to see the sense in leaving this sort of decision solely to us. And if the decision's not up to us -- I assume I'm not mistaken in thinking people would be upset if we decided GFDL docs were A-OK -- I don't see how it makes much sense to expect us alone to explain it. I believe the release team has decided that GFDL inclusion in main is RC for the etch release, The release team had pretty much decided that back in 2003 [2], but the release team doesn't really get to decide what's appropriate for unstable or experimental, let alone the wiki, web pages and whatever. but I'm not sure where I could find that statement either. I suppose that might be sufficient. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/06/msg00019.html Note the above is a consequence of the developers' decision to remove non-free docs by way of changing the social contract; it's (that part of) that decision that needs the explanation, IMO. Maybe retitling it to Why we do not consider the GNU Free Documentation License free or something would work better, though that seems more likely to push people's buttons. Cheers, aj [0] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWikiIsNotGFDL [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00605.html [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20031004172513/http://people.debian.org/~ajt/sarge_rc_policy.txt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 08:53:11PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: In addition to the simple restrictions of freedoms imposed by the Invariant Sections, they also cause practical problems: [...] This is a huge chunk of text for a dcoument that's already a bit too long to be easily read. Analogous to the software program freedoms, we need to articulate the freedoms required for the subset of software called documentation. If we're making a position statement, we shouldn't say we need to articulate things, we should just articulate them. From everything I've seen, though, I think Debian simply wants to have the same freedoms for programs and documentation, rather than coming up with a different set; certainly that's the way the social contract is now written. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: It's been six months since the social contract changes that forbid non-free documentation went into effect [0], and we're still distributing GFDLed stuff in unstable [1]. I think we should get serious about fixing that, and as part of that that we should release the following statement (or one like it) on the GFDL: --- Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main ~~ Seconded. This has been constantly redebated and rediscussed and we really should come to a final conclusion about it one way or the other. One note, which doesn't affect my second: It may be worthwhile to explicitly say GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 in that heading and elsewhere in the text, just in case the FSF fixes at least the DRM and transparent copy provisions in a new release. As-is, the versioning is not mentioned until the how to fix section, which makes sense right now but which may look strange if read from the perspective of the future. - -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8 http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/ iD8DBQFDt2hF+YXjQAr8dHYRAoOXAKDBD3z+VlUqy0Ne7wZYhlecZFquhwCcCOtB wqX22E1oovvyxil/7HMAH0o= =FHIn -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 03:02:04PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main ~~ (0) Summary Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is no. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others, and Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section. (1) What is the GFDL? The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation, and promote it to others. It is also used as Wikipedia's license. To quote the GFDL's Preamble: The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of copyleft, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software. (2) How does it fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from a documention directly into free software under the GFDL. The major conflicts are: (2.1) Invariant Sections The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of invariant sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in future. Modifiability is, however, a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Invariant sections create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure the documentation remains accurate and relevant. (2.2) Transparent Copies The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for transparent copies of documentation (that is, a copy of the documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy is made available for a year after the opaque copies are no longer being distributed. For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be sufficient, but this does not satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements. (2.3) Digital Rights Management The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. This inhibits freedom in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a transparent copy of the work; and, as written, it also potentially disallows encrypting the documentation, or even storing it on a filesystem that supports permissions. (3) Why does documentation need to be Free Software? There are a number of obvious differences between programs and documentation that often inspire people to ask why not simply have different standards for the two? For example, books are often written by individuals, while programs are written by teams, so proper credit for a book might be more important than proper credit for a program. On the other hand, free software is often written by a single person, and free software documentation is often written by a larger group of contributors. And the line between what is documentation and what is a program is not always so clear either, as content from one is often needed in the other (to provide online help, to
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 03:02:04PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Bcc'ed to -project, -legal and -private; followups to -vote please. It's been six months since the social contract changes that forbid non-free documentation went into effect [0], and we're still distributing GFDLed stuff in unstable [1]. I think we should get serious about fixing that, and as part of that that we should release the following statement (or one like it) on the GFDL: --- Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main ~~ (0) Summary Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is no. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others, and Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section. (1) What is the GFDL? The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation, and promote it to others. It is also used as Wikipedia's license. To quote the GFDL's Preamble: The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of copyleft, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software. (2) How does it fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from a documention directly into free software under the GFDL. The major conflicts are: (2.1) Invariant Sections The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of invariant sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in future. Modifiability is, however, a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Invariant sections create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure the documentation remains accurate and relevant. (2.2) Transparent Copies The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for transparent copies of documentation (that is, a copy of the documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy is made available for a year after the opaque copies are no longer being distributed. For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be sufficient, but this does not satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements. (2.3) Digital Rights Management The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. This inhibits freedom in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a transparent copy of the work; and, as written, it also potentially disallows encrypting the documentation, or even storing it on a filesystem that supports permissions. (3) Why does documentation need to be Free Software? There are a number of obvious differences between programs and documentation that often inspire people to ask why not simply have different standards for the two? For example, books are often written by individuals, while programs are written by teams, so proper credit for a book might be more important than proper credit for a program. On the other hand, free software is
Re: GR Proposal: GFDL statement
On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 03:02:04PM +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au wrote: Bcc'ed to -project, -legal and -private; followups to -vote please. It's been six months since the social contract changes that forbid non-free documentation went into effect [0], and we're still distributing GFDLed stuff in unstable [1]. I think we should get serious about fixing that, and as part of that that we should release the following statement (or one like it) on the GFDL: --- Why the GNU Free Documentation License is not suitable for Debian main ~~ (0) Summary Within the Debian community there has been a significant amount of concern about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and whether it is, in fact, a free license. This document attempts to explain why Debian's answer is no. It should be noted that this does not imply any hostility towards the Free Software Foundation, and does not mean that GFDL documentation should not be considered free enough by others, and Debian itself will continue distributing GFDL documentation in its non-free section. (1) What is the GFDL? The GFDL is a license written by the Free Software Foundation, who use it as a license for their own documentation, and promote it to others. It is also used as Wikipedia's license. To quote the GFDL's Preamble: The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of copyleft, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software. (2) How does it fail to meet Debian's standards for Free Software? The GFDL conflicts with traditional requirements for free software in a variety of ways, some of which are expanded upon below. As a copyleft license, one of the consequences of this is that it is not possible to include content from a documention directly into free software under the GFDL. The major conflicts are: (2.1) Invariant Sections The most troublesome conflict concerns the class of invariant sections that, once included, may not be modified or removed from the documentation in future. Modifiability is, however, a fundamental requirement of the DFSG, which states: 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Invariant sections create particular problems in reusing small portions of the work (since any invariant sections must be included also, however large), and in making sure the documentation remains accurate and relevant. (2.2) Transparent Copies The second conflict is related to the GFDL's requirements for transparent copies of documentation (that is, a copy of the documentation in a form suitable for editing). In particular, Section 3 of the GFDL requires that a transparent copy of the documentation be included with every opaque copy distributed, or that a transparent copy is made available for a year after the opaque copies are no longer being distributed. For free software works, Debian expects that simply providing the source (or transparent copy) alongside derivative works will be sufficient, but this does not satisfy either clause of the GFDL's requirements. (2.3) Digital Rights Management The third conflict with the GFDL arises from the measures in Section 2 that attempt to overcome Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. In particular, the GFDL states that You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. This inhibits freedom in three ways: it limits use of the documentation as well as distribution, by covering all copies made, as well as copies distributed; it rules out distributing copies on DRM-protected media, even if done in such a way as to give users full access to a transparent copy of the work; and, as written, it also potentially disallows encrypting the documentation, or even storing it on a filesystem that supports permissions. (3) Why does documentation need to be Free Software? There are a number of obvious differences between programs and documentation that often inspire people to ask why not simply have different standards for the two? For example, books are often written by individuals, while programs are written by
