Re: coupling software documentation and political speech in the GFDL
- Original Message - From: Brian T. Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Dylan Thurston [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: debian-legal@lists.debian.org Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2003 7:47 PM Subject: Re: coupling software documentation and political speech in the GFDL Dylan Thurston [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 2003-09-26, Bruce Perens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The conflict is around the need professed by FSF to hitch political speech to the cart of software documentation, and the fact that Debian, while it may have been designed in part to achive a social or political goal, was designed to deliver software rather than political speech. Sure, that's a nice analysis. What do you propose to do about it? Debian would be quite happy to distribute modifiable political speech (with suitable provisions for protecting the author's integrity), but the FSF has not shown any interest in considering that possibility; and most DDs posting here seem quite firm in the view that unmodifiable political speech is not allowed. Bear in mind that Debian does distribute freely modifiable political text, for which the original author is *dead*, and yet his original words are still copied about substantially unchanged: the book of Amos, for example, in package bible-kjv-text. I think RMS fear that we would somehow change his essays is severely unfounded. Additionally, his argument is misleading in ways which prevent counterargument: there's no way we could change his essays. We might derive works from his essays, though it is unlikely they would be noticeably similar to his essays. -Brian -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.3x4.net
Re: coupling software documentation and political speech in the GFDL
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Brian T. Sniffen) writes: Bear in mind that Debian does distribute freely modifiable political text, for which the original author is *dead*, and yet his original words are still copied about substantially unchanged: the book of Amos, for example, in package bible-kjv-text. I think RMS fear that we would somehow change his essays is severely unfounded. A nice example. Consider that the words of Amos have been passed around (since the current edition was prepared) for rather a long time, with a pretty good record of maintaining accuracy. BTW, Amos is one of my favorites. Thomas
Re: coupling software documentation and political speech in the GFDL
Dylan Thurston [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 2003-09-26, Bruce Perens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The conflict is around the need professed by FSF to hitch political speech to the cart of software documentation, and the fact that Debian, while it may have been designed in part to achive a social or political goal, was designed to deliver software rather than political speech. Sure, that's a nice analysis. What do you propose to do about it? Debian would be quite happy to distribute modifiable political speech (with suitable provisions for protecting the author's integrity), but the FSF has not shown any interest in considering that possibility; and most DDs posting here seem quite firm in the view that unmodifiable political speech is not allowed. Bear in mind that Debian does distribute freely modifiable political text, for which the original author is *dead*, and yet his original words are still copied about substantially unchanged: the book of Amos, for example, in package bible-kjv-text. I think RMS fear that we would somehow change his essays is severely unfounded. Additionally, his argument is misleading in ways which prevent counterargument: there's no way we could change his essays. We might derive works from his essays, though it is unlikely they would be noticeably similar to his essays. -Brian
Re: coupling software documentation and political speech in the GFDL
On 2003-09-26, Bruce Perens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The conflict is around the need professed by FSF to hitch political speech to the cart of software documentation, and the fact that Debian, while it may have been designed in part to achive a social or political goal, was designed to deliver software rather than political speech. Sure, that's a nice analysis. What do you propose to do about it? Debian would be quite happy to distribute modifiable political speech (with suitable provisions for protecting the author's integrity), but the FSF has not shown any interest in considering that possibility; and most DDs posting here seem quite firm in the view that unmodifiable political speech is not allowed. Peace, Dylan
