On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 12:40:38PM +0200, Anton Zinoviev wrote: > On Wed, Feb 01, 2006 at 11:00:34PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > > > > Yes, I am uneasy myself on that clause. But see, I regard > > removal of copyright notices as prohibited by copyright law, and if > > the original program displayed copyright notices, not being able to > > remove those notices from the displayed text is closer in spirit to > > the non-removal of copyright notices from the sources that I think it > > passes my "is free" radar. > > I can see why you are uneasy with that clause - it makes impossible to > just say "arbitrary modification". And the clause we are talking > about is not the only necessary exception for "arbitrary > modification". If you say that the non-removal of those notices from > the displayed text passes your "is free" radar and the invariant > secondary sections do not pass -- I can acknowledge this and I > understand this. However I don't understand why you think that your > interpretation is the only one possible -- it is not.
Alright, I'm going to stick my head into this thread.
I am unconvinced that the DFSG means 'all modifications', I think that
it really does mean all reasonable modifications.
But the GFDL fails this, _entirely_.
Even by the bounds of 'reasonable modifications' the GFDL with _any_
invariant sections is completely non-free, and how should be fairly
obvious, but I'll give an extreme example:
I'll take a large GNU manual, for reasons that could be anything from
because I'm feeling strange today to because I'm fond of the build
system they use for producing other formats of the document, I want to
cut it down.
So I chop it down until there is nothing _except_ the copyright
statement and the invariant sections.
I can no longer make any modifications, I can't change the copyright
statement because, well, the law where I live forbids me from doing
that.
And I can't change _anything_ in the document itself, I can add to it,
but I can't change it.
No license changes have been made, no weird clauses have been invoked
that changes the rules, but the document at that point is not
modifiable, you can add to it, but nothing else at all.
And the last time I looked, we were ruling that shipping programs with
non-free data files was also enough to make them non-free.
So, in short, it doesn't matter WHAT interpretation of the DFSG you go
for as far as modifications allowed, a GFDL document with invariant
sections can not be free because they consist of components which by the
license you can not remove, and which by the license are non-free by
themselves.
Would you care to make an attempt at a reason why the GFDL should be
allowed, and at the same time programs which ship with required
components which fail the DFSG must be in contrib or non-free instead of
main?
(Yes, I'm aware of the argument that the license breaks if the invariant
sections are no longer secondary, if you invoke that in the argument I
will read it as stating that I am also not free to remove the
non-invariant portions of my choosing, which makes it even LESS free.)
Zephaniah E. Hull.
--
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