On 8/23/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
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.
No it's more so. It is hard under the CC-BY-ND license to tie free text to non free. The closest you can get would be a collection of CC-BY-SA and CC-BY-ND and you could separate the non free text from the free.
It only allows the author of a document to attach a statement about his relationship to the work
That would be covered by the endorsements clause.
... 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.
And if the invariant section happens to be a nazi rant you've successfully created a -Nde and Nfr license
Think of it like a really enhanced form of attribution.
Not even close. The attribution clause is largely meaningless outside of the US since the law would require you to credit the author in any case. Attribution isn't generally used as a means for pushing ideology (Mr [[John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood]] excluded).
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...
I would argue that it suggests that the FSF on a certain level really doesn't get it.
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.
Nope just the obvious ones. Completely misses the invariant sections known as "copyright notices" and "warranty Disclaimers".
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.
Discussion would require the FSF to get involved.