On 8/23/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Pure GFDL is useful only for the GNU manifesto nothing else. For anything else CC-BY-ND does the job better.
It's offtopic, but your message betrays a commons misunderstanding about the invariant sections clause of the GFDL. The invariant sections clause isn't at all as offensive as a -ND license. It only allows the author of a document to attach a statement about his relationship to the work ... it can't be used to limit the freedom over the functional parts of the work beyond the inability to remove or cahnge the invariant section itself. Think of it like a really enhanced form of attribution.
Yes, it's silly and obnoxious which is why we don't accept GFDLed content with invariant sections it so it's a non-issue for us...
The modified version of the GFDL we use is just about acceptable for books but is still pretty poor.
The proposed SFDL in the current FSF proposals eliminates invariant sections for documents that don't already have them. Making the issue even more dead.
If you see other ways to improve the FDL please comment more on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GFDL_suggestions (Yes, I'm aware that you are one of the few people who already have.. the link is for everyone else).
It's quite possible for the FDL to become the best fitting and best written license for useful content such as educational videos, text books, encyclopedia articles, etc.. but only if we provide a lot of input and have a lot of discussion.