Jeremy Hankins wrote:
olive <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
The whole specification is indeed not public. What I claim is that a
document using only word features fully understandable by openoffice
might be considered as trandsparent since it use only spec available
to the public: the subset of word fully understandable by openoffice
is public. If a document use features that are not available to the
public it is indeed not transparent. But there are very few such
documents.
My understanding is that the intent behind the "transparent" definition
is specifically to rule out things such as Word documents. I.e., this
is by design, not accident. What's questionable (and what I take the GR
to make a decision on) is whether the intent was to rule out oppenoffice
or lyx. But nonetheless, here is the full definition:
A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy,
represented in a format whose specification is available to the
general public, that is suitable for revising the document
straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed
of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely
available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text
formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats
suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise
Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been
arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers
is not Transparent. An image format is not Transparent if used for
any substantial amount of text. A copy that is not "Transparent" is
called "Opaque".
Are really you suggesting that Word documents qualify? Not only does
the public availability requirement refer to the specification of the
format (not the contents of the document), but there's still the
question of whether it can be edited "straightforwardly with generic
text editors." Note that these two requirements are connected with an
implicit "and", along with a requirement about suitability for input to
text formatters.
Is it straightforward to have to:
- Run the document through something to parse the word format into
plain text.
- Proofread it for formatting or other errors.
- Edit it
- Reverse the process by running the document through something to
translate it back into word format.
- Proof it for formatting or other errors yet again.
What's more, is the final step even possible without access to MS word?
I think there's a discussion to be had about whether it's a legitimate
goal for a free software license to rule out proprietary formats such as
word documents. But I think it's quite clear that the GFDL does rule
out using word documents as source -- though the recent GR confuses this
somewhat.
The greatest problem is that the GFDL is really badly written and
although I have always defended that it is free, it would be very
usefull if the FSF could one for all resolve these ambiguities.
Later in the license they give as example of a transparent copy an XML
file with a publicly available DTD. So openoffice document qualifies (as
you now openoffice format is in XML format) although openoffice is not a
"generic text" editor. I think it is reasonable to interpret the GFDL by
saying that if a document is fully understandable by free softwares, it
is transparent. I say that it is reasonable that if we denote by WORD*
the subset of WORD fully understandable by openoffice; then a document
in the WORD* format is transparent since the specification of WORD* is
public. Moreover a document in WORD* can be make transparent by storing
it in the openoffice format.
I know that it is not the letter of the GFDL but I think that the
litteral reading of this license give rise to wrong conclusions. This
was probably the message of the last vote: obviously Debian developpers
have not said that a license that prohibits storing its own copy without
reading permission is free; they have said that the GFDL actually didn't
say that.
Some might argue that a court will read the GFDL in a more litteral
sense. I do not think that because it seems very obvious that the
copyright holder of a GFDL document don't want to restrict what you do
with your own copy. Of course I might be wrong but for every license
there is always a risk that a juge read it in a different way; Debian
must read the license in the most probable way. For example, some people
try to have a court declaring the GPL illegal which would maybe make GPL
documents unredistribuable. I think it is not probable that it will
succeed but the risk is never zero. The fact that the risk is not zero
does not make GPL softwares unfree.
Olive
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