On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 20:20 +0100, Eneko Lacunza wrote: > > And I'm speaking about Free Documentation. > > Nobody is saying that the GFDL is a free software license. > > Since we are speaking about two different things, we obviously cannot > > agree on anything. :-) > > Why is different the "free" as in freedom concept for documentation from > the concept of "free" as in freedom for "software"?
I think the GFDL was designed with some pretty narrow use cases in mind - there is definitely a lot of documentation it's not suitable for. But, that's not to say we should treat documentation the same as we treat software all the time (though often we probably could/should). If you look how documentation is treated as software, it only really makes some sense in the digital world - e.g., GPL'ing docs. I would struggle to define a paperback book as any of source code, object code or executable - and in that sense, printing a GPL'd book is problematic. It also doesn't address specific non-electronic-format rights you might like - for example, the GFDL makes explicit the ability to lend. The GPL doesn't give you that right. If you can't lend a GPL'd paperback, is it still "free"? If you didn't create it electronically, is it "free"? (probably not; it forces others to re-type the whole thing into electronic format in order to fulfil the source availability clauses). Also, even in the electronic world, documents and software are treated differently, as a matter of law if nothing else. So, for example, in this country I have in inalienable right to be identified as the author of any given document I may have created - with software, that's not the case. On at least a practical level, we need to take those differences into account. > There is people that thinks software is the conjuction of programs and > their documentation (and other thing, like images, etc.). For example, > Debian project seems to think this way. Well, Debian have a specific problem domain: e.g., they're putting stuff onto CD, and want to be able to distribute it. And that's fair enough, and there's a lot of mileage in treating electronic documents the same as software. Having consistent licensing terms across everything they distribute makes pretty obvious sense. Cheers, Alex. _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
