Scripsit MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > It is a shame that debian-legal seems to be the largest visible group > getting indigestion from this problem. The argument that we should aid > unfree book producers seems as reasonable as the argument that we should > offer concessions to unfree software producers: not at all.
The funny thing is that none, or only a tiny portion of, the non-free aspects of the GFDL would be of any "aid" to hardcopy publishers. Which publisher would actively prefer to publish a book with Invariant Sections in it, over the same book where the sections were free? Which publisher would actively prefer to publish a book with mandatory Cover Texts that at best is what the publisher would put on the cover himself anyway and at worst are wrong or obsolete or (worst!) appeals that the the customer should buy the book from another publisher? Which publisher would actively prefer to publish a book that came with fuzzy and (according to some people) possibly harmful rules about "Opaque" and "Transparent" formats, over the same book licensed without these problems. Which publisher would actively prefer to publish a book in a foreign translation when largish sections must be retained in English, as opposed to a book where it would be legal to translate everything and not risk scaring readers away because the book is apparently partly in English? Which publisher would actively prefer to publish a book where he was legally forbidden to have a graphic designer design an appealing cover (by the "equally prominent and visible")? Exclude from "publisher" in all these cases a hypothetical zealous author who is his own publisher and wants to make it inconvenient for other people to publish hardcopies that compete with his own - he does not need a "free" license at all to do so. No, the "we want to be nice to publishers" theory is at best a misrepresentation of the FSF's intention (I don't see it in the GFDL preamble), at worst a diversion tactic. -- Henning Makholm "We will discuss your youth another time."
