On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>>
>>No, you didn't get it. What I wrote before was example for why invariant.
>>sections _can_ be useful. Do not compare apples and pears[0]. On the
>>other hand is your anti-semetic message subject to penal law not
>>copyright law, at least here in Germany... but I understand what you
>>wanted to say.
>Right, and invariant sections can be useful for software. So what?
Goal of the free software movement, as declared by FSF :-)
is a completely replace proprietary software world.
Here you want to state that some useful classes of software
is inherently doomed to be outside of "free software" definition? I
right understand you?
>It's entirely within the author's rights to do that, but it means that
>the documentation is impossible to use for certain purposes. When we're
>looking at software, we wouldn't accept that restriction. Why should we
>accept it in documentation, when software would benefit just as much
>from protection against contrary opinions?
IMHO, there is a confusion in terminology.
"When we're looking at software", "that restriction" is,
AFAIK, about discrimination against use of particular copies of
work, or, at least, particular fixed form of work, in the specific
field of endeavour.
But here you talked not about discrimination against using
the copies of manual, but about discrimination against creating
specific types of derivative works. This may be reasonable, but
please note, that in _this_ sense, many of debian/main packages is
also non-free. Because they not contain (needed) specific
permissions to create any derivative works which is not computer
programs or literary works.
