[Foundation-l] Licensing interim update

[Anthony]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 9:30 AM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/2/10 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> > That may be the case, but even if it is it still doesn't justify the
> > relicensing that is currently taking place.  The power to release content
> > under new licenses should be (and is) held by the authors individually,
> not
> > collectively. "Or later" was meant for minor changes or when fundamental
> > flaws/loopholes were found in the license itself, not for the case when a
> > supermajority of license users decides they should have picked a
> different
> > license.
>
> The history of the GPL suggests otherwise.
>

The text, of both the GPL and the GFDL, states the purpose of "or later"
quite clearly.

"The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU
Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be
similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
address new problems or concerns."

The only valid reason to make changes to the license is "to address new
problems or concerns".  As has been pointed out many times by the people
defending this switch, the concerns and alleged "problems" of the GFDL are
not at all new.

For a similar perspective on this issue, which called the FSF's decision "a
serious moral mistake and breach of trust", see the Open Letter to Richard
Stallman by Chris Frey (http://www.advogato.org/article/990.html).

> The FSF violated an important trust when they introduced this relicensing
> > clause into GFDL 1.3, and that's the biggest flaw with the GFDL.
>
> Nah. By far the biggest flaw with the GFDL was that it was written
> with a rather narrow definition of document in mind.
>

How is that a flaw?  Seems like a feature to me.  I'd say the attempt to
create a license which works equally well for software documentation,
encyclopedias, t-shirts, and coffee mugs is one of the flaws with CC-BY-SA,
not one of the solutions.