begin Dale Scheetz quotation: > On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, Branden Robinson wrote: > > > As usual, this issue has been beaten to death on a list you don't read. > > > > Please review the archives of debian-legal for the past several months. > > > > In a nutshell: > > > > 1) The current version of the GNU FDL is uncontroversially DFSG-free if > > there are no Cover Texts and no Invariant Sections. Note that your > > license notice is supposed to indicate the presence or absence of Cover > > Texts and Invariant Sections. > > > > 2) The Open Publication License (OPL), is also uncontroversially > > DFSG-free when none of the "license options" are exercised. > > So, in fact, both of these licenses are non-free, as they contain clauses > that can be used, and will be considered non-free.
No. Specific optional aspects of the licenses, which are required by the licenses themselves to be declared in the license notice contained in the covered document, are non-free. The licenses can be used to make documents DFSG-free, and I believe DFSG/OPL documents are essentially DFSG-free by default, since the conflicts arise only when these options are explicitly invoked by the copyright holder in the license notice. > I find it ... foolish to declare a license to be free IFF some clauses of > the license are not exercised. Using this language, any proprietary > license becomes free as long as none of the proprietary sections are > inforced by the author... Let's try this again, as you seem to have misunderstood what Branden wrote. If a document is covered by GFDL and contains no Cover Texts or Invariant Sections, then that document is, according to Branden, uncontroversially DFSG-free. (I say "according to Branden" because I don't read debian-legal either, nor have I taken the time to check the archives.) If a document is covered by OPL, and the license notice does not declare any non-DFSG-free options, then that document is, according to Branden, uncontroversially DFSG-free. This has nothing to do with "enforcing" license terms after the fact, so your claim that "any proprietary license becomes free ... [if] not [e]nforced by the author" is a complete non sequitur. It has, instead, to do with how the license is applied to the document in the first place. If a GFDL document has Cover Texts or Invariant Sections, those sections must be explicitly identified by the copyright holder in the document's license notice (I believe this is a requirement of the GFDL itself). If no such sections are identified, then the document is fully modifiable, and therefore DFSG-free. Why you find this hard to understand is a bit of a mystery to me. Craig
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