On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 06:26:27AM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote: [...] > Debian and the GNU Free Documentation License > ============================================= > > This is the position of the Debian Project about the GNU Free Documentation > License as published by the Free Software Foundation: > > 1. We consider that the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 > conflicts with traditional requirements for free software, since it > allows for non-removable, non-modifiable parts to be present in > documents licensed under it. Such parts are commonly referred to as > "invariant sections", and are described in Section 4 of the GFDL. > > As modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free > Software Guidelines, this restriction is not acceptable for us, and > we cannot accept in our distribution works that include such > unmodifiable content. > > 2. At the same time, we also consider that works licensed under the > GNU Free Documentation License that include no invariant sections > do fully meet the requirements of the Debian Free Software > Guidelines. > > This means that works that don't include any Invariant Sections, > Cover Texts, Acknowledgements, and Dedications (or that do, but > permission to remove them is explicitly granted), are suitable for > the main component of our distribution. > > 3. Despite the above, GFDL'd documentation is still not free of > trouble, even for works with no invariant sections: as an example, > it is incompatible with the major free software licenses, which > means that GFDL'd text can't be incorporated into free programs. > > For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license > their works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under the > same terms as the software they refer to, or any of the traditional
shouldn't this line end like "or _under_ any of the traditional"? > free software licenses like the the GPL or the BSD license. That being said, I second this proposal (with or without that fix). Originally I thought the DRM and transparent requirements were problematic, but the discussion in the thread sparked by Anton's amendment has convinced me that these are nothing more than just technicalities, with no serious real-life impact. The same, however, cannot be said about invariant sections. -- Fun will now commence -- Seven Of Nine, "Ashes to Ashes", stardate 53679.4
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