"Sergey V. Spiridonov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > The GNU FDL, like the proprietary licenses I mentioned as examples, > > offers a trade. Unlike the MIT/X11 license or the GNU GPL, the GNU > > FDL does not only grant permissions to the user: it offers to trade > > him some permissions in exchange for some freedoms. > > The particular trade it offers is non-free. > > Do I understand you correctly?
I don't think so: > Copyright law grants some permissions. GPL grants some additional > permissions and does not put additional restrictions. Copyright law restricts some freedoms: copyright is not an inherent right, but a government-granted right of control. The GPL lifts some of those restrictions, imposing none of its own. > Do you state that any license like FDL, which puts additional > restrictions on user is non-free disregarding of additional > permissions it grants? Certainly any additional permissions it grants don't make a difference. There may be some infinitesimal additional restriction which does not make an otherwise Free license non-Free... but I cannot think of any. I doubt they exist. > Such point of view on freedom is dependent on the copyright law. No, any given work may have slightly different restrictions in different domains of copyright law, but from looking at a license to see whether it tries to restrict the user or free the user, it's still not to hard to classify it as Free or non-Free. -Brian
