Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > Anyway I don't care about this. These are O'Reilly's problems.
Aren't they every free documentation user's problem? It seems unwise to me to encourage users to modify and/or republish or redistribute something covered by an unclear license by accepting it into Debian. After all, in the worst case, O'Reilly could win a lawsuit against someone because O'Reilly successfully argued somebody's republishing did not include enough material from enough alternate sources. This would be rather chilling for people who are looking for books they can improve and redistribute freely. > Woody is coming and I don't want to miss the package for a long long > long legal disquisition. Shouldn't free software and free documentation policy resolution come before practical considerations like missing the next Woody? But to answer your point more directly, how much of this would go away if Debian's free documentation policy were the same terms as the GNU FDL? It seems to me if Debian chooses to reinvent the wheel of free documentation considerations they are poised to make another mistake along the lines as not adopting FSF's definition of free software.
