(Matthew Garrett:) >> And what if a user wishes to link documentation into code? Do you >> believe that it is acceptable to ship content within Debian that may >> never be included in a piece of code that Debian could ship?
(Adam Warner:) >If the licence forbid linking with any code, no (I think we could tie >this into discrimination against what is to us an important field of >endeavour: computer programming). The GFDL effectively forbids linking with any code, because it is impossible to apply the GFDL in any reasonable way to a program intended to be run. :-P (The text of the GFDL makes far too many specific references to concepts which don't occur in binary files. "...the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text"? How do you interpret that for a compiled program binary? For that matter, what's sufficient to satisfy 'Invariant Section' requirements in a binary -- is dumping it into an unused section of the binary sufficient? Making sure it's in a section that gets loaded into memory? Or does it have to be displayed on each invocation?) So I guess you agree that GFDLed documents must not be allowed in Debian. :-) -- Nathanael Nerode <neroden at gcc.gnu.org> http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
