Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 09:38:59AM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote: Since the FSF's goal couldn't possibly be to attract a following of loyal idiots, I conclude that invariant sections are an ineffective strategy for reaching the FSF's target audience. You're saying the FSF is less clever than V.I. Lenin? (If you don't get this, move on...) -- G. Branden Robinson|Build a fire for a man, and he'll Debian GNU/Linux |be warm for a day. Set a man on [EMAIL PROTECTED] |fire, and he'll be warm for the http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |rest of his life. - Terry Pratchett pgpzo0cZFuIxb.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] a tapoté : Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm even not sure whether it's a problem to have an invariant part in documentation. As my main area of work is History, I'm familiar with books -some kind of documentation- that I cannot change physically but I still can use fully (read, understand... and so execute and modify, by writing my own text, as there's no binary form involved here). You're not the only one to have this misconception, so I want to emphasize this point. The only way you can write your own text based on the old one is if the license permits you to do so. Typically with books that means the work is in the public domain or you've got explicit permission from the author. I'm completely capable to read a book and make a summary, make a speech about it ... there's no way to forbid that - since I have the freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Every scientific book is made of references, bibliographies. You do not remodify a book someone wrote - that's pointless. If you have something new to say, or something you want to criticize, you make your own book. For the sake of comprehension, it helps. It's interesting to be able to modify a book only when it's a simple manual. Something that explain *how to* do something specific (emacs manual) - and not when your book express a point of view (gnu manifesto), not when a book explain how was or is something (history and sociology books, for instance) There no problem with that for me. We cannot modify the GNU manifesto: who cares? If you want to make your own, inspired by this one, go ahead. Your brain is already able to read this text, execute this text, modify this text, reuse this text. It's completely different than not having access to the source code of a software or not being able to, legally, reusing the code someone wrote. In these cases there's nothing you can do at all. Finally, in manual, you can have a part which is really a manual specific part, which should be free. But you can have also a part that express a political stand, for example, and this part should not be modified, because it would be a lack of respect for the believes of the manual author. This part should be invariant. Just like the mail you just received: I do not grant you the right to modify my mail. You can quote it, explain it to someone else, forward it to someone else. But you cannot modify it at all strictly speaking. Is it an issue? -- Mathieu Roy Homepage: http://yeupou.coleumes.org Not a native english speaker: http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
On 2003-08-29 14:28:54 +0100 Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] a tapoté : 1/ The statement that you were objecting to here does not use we at all, so defining we is irrelevant. I replied to Josselin who wrote the following: If providing any sort of crap _we_ can was a service to our users, there wouldn't be any DFSG. _We_ believe providing a non-free manual is a disservice to our users. If they can't modify it freely, and can't put it on their encrypted filesystem, _we_ feel it is not suitable for them. You addressed that elsewhere in your email, in a rather rude tone, I think, and I did not take issue with it. Please try to read your own emails! That was not relevant to my reply to your claim that it was inaccurate to state readers of this list...c. Also, in the part you quote, there may be two different groups represented by the we in the two paragraphs. I know it is difficult for some people to accept that a person can be a member of multiple groups, but you're smarter than that. If you are not capable to read carefully mails you are talking about before pretending this is irrelevant, I do not believe the rest of you mail can be of any interest. Sorry. That's your choice, but I am very surprised by it. After all, you are the person with the URL of an appeal to excuse misinterpretations in your signature. If you will not listen to explanations of what you seem to have misinterpreted, how can we help you to understand? You did seem to start quoting an irrelevant dictionary definition back at me and I think it was fair to comment on the insult. I am a native speaker and I do know the first person plural (and when I'm unsure, language texts are on the bookcases here...). Maybe you just don't like the idea that some documentation is also software (=~= there is a non-empty intersection between the sets of documentation and software) and this is a convenient way to avoid it? -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 03:17:12PM +0200, Mathieu Roy wrote: I'm completely capable to read a book and make a summary, make a speech about it ... there's no way to forbid that - since I have the freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Every scientific book is made of references, bibliographies. You do not remodify a book someone wrote - that's pointless. If you have something new to say, or something you want to criticize, you make your own book. For the sake of comprehension, it helps. It's interesting to be able to modify a book only when it's a simple manual. Something that explain *how to* do something specific (emacs manual) - and not when your book express a point of view (gnu manifesto), not when a book explain how was or is something (history and sociology books, for instance) As evidence that the FSF's attempt to disseminate their philosophy by piggybacking it on technical manuals using the GFDL is flawed, I present the fact that none of the people that the FSF's views seem to have reached via this vector are capable of reasoning clearly about the difference between stuff Debian wants to distribute (manuals) and stuff Debian doesn't want to distribute (sociology books). Since the FSF's goal couldn't possibly be to attract a following of loyal idiots, I conclude that invariant sections are an ineffective strategy for reaching the FSF's target audience. Feel free to use the GFDL when writing your sociology books. Don't expect Debian to distribute them. There no problem with that for me. We cannot modify the GNU manifesto: who cares? If you want to make your own, inspired by this one, go ahead. Your brain is already able to read this text, execute this text, modify this text, reuse this text. Who cares? doesn't sound like an argument from principle. I'll stick to Debian's statements of principle as the basis for /my/ opinions about what Debian should distribute, thanks. Finally, in manual, you can have a part which is really a manual specific part, which should be free. But you can have also a part that express a political stand, for example, and this part should not be modified, because it would be a lack of respect for the believes of the manual author. This part should be invariant. Yes, and our goal is to always respect authors: by not distributing works that they don't wish to make available under the terms of the DFSG. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgpvSxTofEOxF.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] a tapoté : 1/ The statement that you were objecting to here does not use we at all, so defining we is irrelevant. I replied to Josselin who wrote the following: If providing any sort of crap _we_ can was a service to our users, there wouldn't be any DFSG. _We_ believe providing a non-free manual is a disservice to our users. If they can't modify it freely, and can't put it on their encrypted filesystem, _we_ feel it is not suitable for them. If you are not capable to read carefully mails you are talking about before pretending this is irrelevant, I do not believe the rest of you mail can be of any interest. Sorry. -- Mathieu Roy Homepage: http://yeupou.coleumes.org Not a native english speaker: http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
On 2003-08-29 14:17:12 +0100 Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm completely capable to read a book and make a summary, make a speech about it ... there's no way to forbid that - since I have the freedom of speech and freedom of thought. That is not a derived work. You can use proprietary software and describe it, too. Every scientific book is made of references, bibliographies. You do not remodify a book someone wrote - that's pointless. And you do not modify a program someone wrote, either? It's not fundamentally different. One more time, with feeeling: I find the position that we would not benefit from a general right to modify, adapt, copy and distribute all sorts of creative work wholly illogical and draws an arbitrary distinction between functional and aesthetic works... ...but that's not relevant to this discussion. Replies off-list, please. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] a tapoté : As evidence that the FSF's attempt to disseminate their philosophy by piggybacking it on technical manuals using the GFDL is flawed, I present the fact that none of the people that the FSF's views seem to have reached via this vector are capable of reasoning clearly about the difference between stuff Debian wants to distribute (manuals) and stuff Debian doesn't want to distribute (sociology books). When you distribute the DFSG, you distribute also your philosophy. Are you ashamed of it? Finally, in manual, you can have a part which is really a manual specific part, which should be free. But you can have also a part that express a political stand, for example, and this part should not be modified, because it would be a lack of respect for the believes of the manual author. This part should be invariant. Yes, and our goal is to always respect authors: by not distributing works that they don't wish to make available under the terms of the DFSG. Including the GPL and the DFSG? Because the DFSG is not DFSG compliant. -- Mathieu Roy Homepage: http://yeupou.coleumes.org Not a native english speaker: http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
On 2003-08-29 13:52:39 +0100 Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The only way you can write your own text based on the old one is if the license permits you to do so. [...] And we can have a fun debate about whether you can still call that plagiarism but it's not really relevant to Debian.
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] a tapoté : On 2003-08-29 14:17:12 +0100 Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm completely capable to read a book and make a summary, make a speech about it ... there's no way to forbid that - since I have the freedom of speech and freedom of thought. That is not a derived work. You can use proprietary software and describe it, too. But describing a software is not the most interesting thing. While describing and analysing a book is the most interesting thing you can do with a book (apart from reading it, obviously). In fact, describing and analysing means approximatively read the source of a book. Every scientific book is made of references, bibliographies. You do not remodify a book someone wrote - that's pointless. And you do not modify a program someone wrote, either? It's not fundamentally different. You cut my message at the wrong place, where I explain why I say it's pointless. The missing part explains that when I thought about a book you've read, you're already modifying it. While you cannot do the same with a software until you get access to the source and explicit right to modify it. In fact, with computer, we're forced to use licenses to get the rights we already have with books. One more time, with feeeling: I find the position that we would not benefit from a general right to modify, adapt, copy You think you found this position only because you cut my text at the wrong place. At the contrary, I think we should all benefit from a general right to modify, adapt, copy and distribute all sort of works. But I think this is usually only impossible with proprietary software. For the other sort of works, it's more the right to copy which is not obvious unfortunately (music major companies do not cares about sample but do care about burned CDs downloaded on the net). And the GFDL is absolutely not a problem about this right. I think this GFDL issue a complete waste of time -- but I do talk about it because it would piss me off to add non-free in my apt-get's sources to get the manual of the free softwares I enjoy. and distribute all sorts of creative work wholly illogical and draws an arbitrary distinction between functional and aesthetic works... ...but that's not relevant to this discussion. Replies off-list, please. This is completely relevant to the subject documentation eq software?. If you're not interesting in this subject, you have the right to stop feeding it. -- Mathieu Roy Homepage: http://yeupou.coleumes.org Not a native english speaker: http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
On 2003-08-29 15:53:09 +0100 Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Because the DFSG is not DFSG compliant. AFAICT, the DFSG is under the OPL with no options enabled and that licence is considered DFSG-free. Am I missing something?
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 04:53:09PM +0200, Mathieu Roy wrote: Yes, and our goal is to always respect authors: by not distributing works that they don't wish to make available under the terms of the DFSG. Including the GPL and the DFSG? Because the DFSG is not DFSG compliant. Other organizations may derive from and build on this document. Please give credit to the Debian project if you do. http://www.debian.org/social_contract Go away, troll. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgpfbjbKxDeyK.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
Le ven 29/08/2003 à 15:28, Mathieu Roy a écrit : MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] a tapoté : 1/ The statement that you were objecting to here does not use we at all, so defining we is irrelevant. I replied to Josselin who wrote the following: If providing any sort of crap _we_ can was a service to our users, there wouldn't be any DFSG. _We_ believe providing a non-free manual is a disservice to our users. If they can't modify it freely, and can't put it on their encrypted filesystem, _we_ feel it is not suitable for them. If you are not capable to read carefully mails you are talking about before pretending this is irrelevant, I do not believe the rest of you mail can be of any interest. Sorry. We meaning a large majority of people reading this list. I thought it was pretty obvious in my email. -- .''`. Josselin Mouette/\./\ : :' : [EMAIL PROTECTED] `. `'[EMAIL PROTECTED] `- Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom signature.asc Description: Ceci est une partie de message numériquement signée
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm even not sure whether it's a problem to have an invariant part in documentation. As my main area of work is History, I'm familiar with books -some kind of documentation- that I cannot change physically but I still can use fully (read, understand... and so execute and modify, by writing my own text, as there's no binary form involved here). You're not the only one to have this misconception, so I want to emphasize this point. The only way you can write your own text based on the old one is if the license permits you to do so. Typically with books that means the work is in the public domain or you've got explicit permission from the author. We're not talking about physical modification (i.e., modification of the hardware). We're talking about modification of the information stream (i.e., modification of the software). People are perfectly free to mark up (highlight, underline, etc.) books they own. Though if they try it on one of mine, I may get a little pissy. ;) (IANAL, but if I'm wrong anywhere in the above, I'm sure I'll be corrected.) -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
On 2003-08-29 13:03:28 +0100 Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] a tapoté : On 2003-08-29 12:04:18 +0100 Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Readers of this list (not only developers) have stated their strong belief that the GFDL does not follow the DFSG. I'm a reader of this list and I'm pretty sure I never stated such belief. Am I the only one? I'm a reader of this list and I'm pretty sure I did. Add me to the OP (whose name you trimmed) and you have plural, so the statement is accurate. What is the use of such hair-splitting? We does not express only the plural but the consensus. 1/ The statement that you were objecting to here does not use we at all, so defining we is irrelevant. 2/ The definition you quoted for we does not support your misinterpretation. 3/ Do not CC me if I do not ask for it! Please, can you point out a message sent by myself where I try to impose my view on the majority? Please, can you point out a message sent by me where I said that you did? I only advised you against persuing that line. My mail is an answer to someone that said that everybody thinks the GFDL as non-free. Which is not accurate. Nothing else. The section of email you quoted in email timestamped 13:04:18 +0200 today did not say that. You seemed to have misunderstood it. [...] I'm even not sure whether it's a problem to have an invariant part in documentation. [...] In Debian, it is. But we hit back the debate is a software a book or not. That's the wrong way round, and your edit to the subject line is misleading. The question is is a book [in Debian] software or not? and the answer is Yes, it is. Those claiming otherwise have not yet given good reason for another answer. No-one is claiming that documentation is a synonym for software, which I think is the normal translation for eq... maybe we should ask if you disagree that (member documentation software) is true if (member documentation things-in-debian)? -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ jabber://[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
Steve Langasek said: On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 04:53:09PM +0200, Mathieu Roy wrote: Including the GPL and the DFSG? Because the DFSG is not DFSG compliant. Other organizations may derive from and build on this document. Please give credit to the Debian project if you do. http://www.debian.org/social_contract Is that license Debian-specific? There's permission there only for non-Debian organizations to derive works. --Joe
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
On 2003-08-29 22:54:27 +0100 Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Talking of licenses when thinking about how manuals and software can be different or not complicates the debate more than I thought. [...] No-one disagrees that they can be different, but you disagree that they can be the same. A manual can be software. Anyway, better luck with researching your next point.
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] a tapoté : On 2003-08-29 15:53:09 +0100 Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Because the DFSG is not DFSG compliant. AFAICT, the DFSG is under the OPL with no options enabled and that licence is considered DFSG-free. Am I missing something? You're not, I tried to demonstrate something with a boring example. Talking of licenses when thinking about how manuals and software can be different or not complicates the debate more than I thought. Let's forget it. -- Mathieu Roy Homepage: http://yeupou.coleumes.org Not a native english speaker: http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english
Re: [was A possible GFDL compromise] documentation eq software ?
On Friday, Aug 29, 2003, at 15:17 US/Eastern, Joe Moore wrote: Is that license Debian-specific? Obviously not. There's permission there only for non-Debian organizations to derive works. Because Debian doesn't need permission to derive from or build on its own documents.
