Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > For example, I might use a manual by tearing it into pieces and using > the individual pages as confetti for a parade. But I cannot copy > GFDL'd manuals and then do this. > > I congratulate you on your imagination--it never occurred to me to > think about this as a use of a manual. > > As it happens, you are free to do that, because copyright does not > cover tearing up a manual. You don't need a license to give you > permission to do that.
No no, I cannot *copy* the manuals and then distribute them this way. > Yes, there are gray areas where it is hard to decide. I had to think > for months about whether the TeX license qualified as free, since it > makes the whole of the original TeX source code invariant. And I had > to think for weeks about a LaTeX license, that required changing the > name of any file that you modify. I eventually concluded that LaTeX > was free despite this requirement, but only because it has a remapping > feature that lets you say "Use file myfoo.sty when the document asks > for foo.sty". We have come to basically exactly the same conclusion about these cases. The GFDL does not allow for this. > Debian has a way of answering that question: but our way, which > involves the DFSG, would say that "send $1 to the author for > permission to make changes" is wrong for the same reasons that "send > $1 to the author for permission to make copies", and is wrong for the > same reason that we think that invariant sections are wrong. > > The DFSG doesn't say anything about invariant sections; you're > assuming a very strict interpretation. You're also assuming that the > DFSG should be applied to manuals as well as software, and that the > interpretation should be the same. The DFSG says that we must have the right to modify everything, at least by the use of patch files.
