On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 09:12:56AM +1000, Brian May wrote: > On 24 July 2013 08:43, Adrian Colomitchi <[email protected]> wrote: > If I change an open source program, chances are the original documentation > no longer applies any more. So I really should be updating the > documentation too. If however there are barriers to updating the > documentation, e.g. for some misconceived reason the copyright owner > decided to make that part invariant, then I won't update it.
As discussed previously, the FDL's optional invariant sections do not apply to the actual documentation. Your examples regarding this problem don't apply. > Another common example given on the Debian mailing lists is if I want to > produce a condensed version of the documentation, e.g. one that will fit on > a single A5 sheet of paper for example. It may not be possible if I have to > include invariant sections. That's the more practical edge case that Ben (and yourself I suppose) is objecting to, however even that extreme example is unlikely to be a problem. People licensing work under the FDL are not likely thinking about restricting the end user. This is clearly not the intent of the license. I'm sure simply writing to the author requesting permission for that specific use case would likely suffice. There might be reasons why that wouldn't work, but it shouldn't be much of a problem in the realm of IT, where programs are typically outdated and replaced quite fast - the copyright holders are likely to still be contactable, as opposed to copyright holders of a work of fiction or some such where the author could have died some time ago. As has been pointed out, these are exceptional edge cases that are very likely solvable one way or another should they ever actually occur.
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