[Foundation-l] Licensing interim update

geni geniice at gmail.com
Tue Feb 10 16:29:29 UTC 2009


2009/2/10 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> 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".

You are free to argue that however the history of the freedom or death
clause suggests that the FSF is useing quite a broad definition of
those terms.

>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.

Not so.

>
> 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).

Actually Chris Frey is taking something close to the opposite position
to you. His position is that was always a potential use for those
clauses but it is a use he didn't expect or want to see actually
happen.



> 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.

Yeah that argument might work in about 1950. Actual real world
experience suggests that it doesn't work. The first problem you have
is that content doesn't stay in the same format if left to itself. For
example what format is this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Government_hospitalityreduced.png

It was originally published in a magazine. The physical version that
was actually scanned is from a punch annual. It is now an electronic
document. Could be any number of things tomorrow (punch cartoons are
popular in history textbooks for example).

The same pictures may quite legitimately be used in books, on
t-shirts, on calendars, on posters and on websites. Any license that
can't cope with this is living in the wrong century.

The other issue you have is that the GFDL isn't much use for software
documentation. If you want to include bits of code and screen shots
realistically the documentation needs to be GPL.

-- 
geni




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