On 09/12/12 16:13, Jason Self wrote: > On 09/12/12 13:50, Michael Dorrington wrote: >> On 08/12/12 17:56, Jason Self wrote: >>> them to switch. Trisquel, for example, also meets the criteria you say >>> and comes with both freedom and privacy included. >> >> Trisquel contains non-free documentation: >> http://packages.trisquel.info/brigantia/gcc-4.6-doc >> This package contains unmodifiable (non-licence) parts. You might be >> better of with Debian 'main' which does come with freedom included. >> > Specifically the GNU Manifesto. You want to change the GNU Manifesto > around to say other things, like "Proprietary software is great?"
This threw me for a while as it is the GNU Emacs manual that has the GNU Manifesto, the GCC Manual has the unmodifiable un-removable (aka Invariant) section of "Funding Free Software". For the concerns you give there are laws on misrepresenting someone and even things like trademark. Copyright won't stop somebody writing a misrepresenting GNU Manifesto if they wrote it from scratch. But my point is about such licensed works being in a manual, rather than their individual licensing terms. > See > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.html#opinions Scroll up a little from the "options" section and the articles says: "... recipes, computer programs, manuals and textbooks, reference works like dictionaries and encyclopedias. For all these functional works, I believe that the issues are basically the same as they are for software and the same conclusions apply. People should have the freedom even to publish a modified version because it's very useful to modify functional works." In '/usr/share/info/gcc-4.6.info.gz' from the above Trisquel gcc-doc package: (a) The FSF's Front-Cover Text is: A GNU Manual So it is an FSF manual that isn't FSF-free because it has an parts that aren't modifiable (excluding licences). Invariant Sections (and Front Cover and Back Cover texts) aren't even removable so people can't turn them into free manuals. Of course the copyright holder can do these things, which in this case is the Free Software Foundation, Inc. > Trisquel does "FSF free", not "Debian free", not "Fedora free", not > someone else's "free." Because Trisquel includes GFDL with Invariant Sections in a repo which is setup on install (I assume), I don't think it is doing what many people, after looking into it, consider free and I don't think it is doing it in the spirit of FSF-free, even if the practise differs. For more info have a look at: * http://web.archive.org/web/20031009105046/http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html * http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001.en.html * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFDL#Criticism Part of the problem is that the FSF puts 'nice' content in unmodifiable sections of their manuals. What if someone wrote a manual for their software which had content in an unmodifiable section that you found particularly 'un-nice' but you found the program useful and wanted to distribute the manuals to people at a stall. How would you feel about not even being able to remove the 'un-nice' section? Regards, Mike. -- FSF member #9429 http://www.fsf.org/register_form?referrer=9429 http://www.fsf.org/about "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users."
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