My understanding of the GFDL issue
Hi, I'd like to thank people who helped me making those things clear, and especialy Nathanael Nerode and Josselin Mouette. I think I can share my understanding of the GFDL problem to debian-legal newcomers or those who did not participate to the debate. I took me quite some time to understand but I think I made progress in the right direction. Please correct me if I'm wrong. - According to Social Contract, clause 1, every byte in Debian is software and must be free, no matter it is program, documentation, data, whatever - A software in Debian is considered as free if it fullfills the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) - the GDFL is not DFSG-compliant, which means that any _work_ licensed under GFDL cannot be distributed in main - additionaly, the GFDL is not GPL-compatible so one cannot mix GFDL _works_ and GPL _works_ Basically, studying the Social Contract and the DFSG should be enough to lead to the same conclusion. What is irrelvant in debian-legal and can be changed through a General Resolution (GR), in the debian-project list: - Do we have to limit software to computer programs and have separate guidelines for documentation? I'll personaly never been in favour of a big GFDL documentation purge in main because I feel that our users are innocent victims of Debian vs FSF disagreement and will be disappointed of seeing their manual vanish. However, one has to admit that there is no obvious solution at present. I hope that Debian and the FSF will keep on discussing and working together and some solution will be found in the middle run to satisfy our users. Finally, in order to make things clear, debian legal people are neither zealots nor bigots. Please accept my apologies if I offended you with what was meant to be a joke. It looks like some words shall never be used in jokes :-( Thanks for reading. Best Regards, -- Jérôme Marant
Re: My understanding of the GFDL issue
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hope that Debian and the FSF will keep on discussing and working together and some solution will be found in the middle run to satisfy our users. I agree. I hope we can avoid this being seen as News at 11: FSF vs Debian deathmatch because it shouldn't become that. The problem is that the FSF has made it clear that they are not going to budge. Debian has tried to work it out with them. It is time to act. Regards, Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: My understanding of the GFDL issue
Hi, A few comments. On 2003-08-30 09:46:45 +0100 Jérôme Marant [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - additionaly, the GFDL is not GPL-compatible so one cannot mix GFDL _works_ and GPL _works_ This is actually beside the point, I think. I'll personaly never been in favour of a big GFDL documentation purge in main because I feel that our users are innocent victims of Debian vs FSF disagreement [...] Actually, the FSF and Debian seem to agree on one thing: FDL is not a free software licence. The disagreement is whether that is important. Debian has given a commitment to its users that it will only contain free software. If anything, the users are innocent victims of a licence checking oversight from Debian's past, which is a bug and the users are always victims of bugs. It seems ironic that FSF normally praises people for improving their licence checking, yet this time they seem to want us to be worse at it. and will be disappointed of seeing their manual vanish. However, one has to admit that there is no obvious solution at present. Well, I'm sure we can try to work to minimise manual vanishes, even if it means we're not shipping the official manuals, through various tactics mentioned previously. I hope that Debian and the FSF will keep on discussing and working together and some solution will be found in the middle run to satisfy our users. I agree. I hope we can avoid this being seen as News at 11: FSF vs Debian deathmatch because it shouldn't become that. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
