FSF's viewpoint anyone? [LWN.net]

FSF's viewpoint anyone?

Posted Jan 12, 2006 19:55 UTC (Thu) by wilck (subscriber, #29844)
Parent article: The coming Debian GFDL collision

A short explanation of the FSF's point of view would have been nice in this article. This is not the first article about this Debian/FSF debate where I find Debian's arguments broadly explained but hardy anything about the reasons the FSF has not to accept Debian's suggestions.

I've read JoeBucks comment but that's rather along "listen, you have to understand poor old RMS" lines. I can't believe that FSF would officially state "we need invariant sections because ESR was a mean guy to RMS". The FSF is more than just RMS.

Did the FSF really never repond to the criticism?

The Debian position statement says "This means that you can't legally extract text from a GFDL'ed manual and put it into integrated help strings in a GPL'ed program". If that's true, the FSF itself would violate either the GPL or the GFDL by including the emacs documentation in the emacs online help! I find that pretty hard to believe.

Could anybody shed some light upon this please?

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FSF's viewpoint anyone?

Posted Jan 12, 2006 20:10 UTC (Thu) by kmccarty (subscriber, #12085) [Link]

Well, (I assume that) the FSF is the copyright holder on both Emacs and the Emacs documentation, which means they can license both however they like. It is not possible to violate your own copyright! What it means is that a third party who adds a new paragraph to the Emacs docs and distributes this modified version (under the GFDL) cannot cut-and-paste the new paragraph into a modified version of Emacs that they distribute under the GPL. The third party could, however, sign over ownership of the new paragraph to the FSF which would then be able to incorporate it in both places.

FSF's viewpoint anyone?

Posted Jan 16, 2006 2:39 UTC (Mon) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

The portions of the emacs manual which are distributed as part of emacs
(which is nowhere near all the emacs manual, incidentally) are obviously
dual-licenced, as you can get them from the emacs source under GPL.

Your example isn't quite right. A 'third party' that wants to add a
paragraph *both* to the official documentation and to the program doesn't
have a problem. If, however, it was a 'second party' (or the FSF itself)
that added a paragraph which it distributed with the whole manual under
GFDL, a third party could not then copy the paragraph without the
attendant Invariant Sections into the GPL program.

Debian would like, at the very least, a general provision in the GFDL
allowing extracts of GFDL documentation to be distributed as part of GPL
software.

FSF's viewpoint anyone?

Posted Jan 16, 2006 15:00 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

You cannot get the emacs manual under GPL. Not any recent version of it, at least; it was relicensed to the GFDL. A year or two ago some folks from the xemacs asked to be able to do so, and were turned down by RMS.

FSF's viewpoint anyone?

Posted Jan 13, 2006 16:02 UTC (Fri) by pimlott (guest, #1535) [Link]

Joe Buck gave an illustrative example of why RMS feels strongly about invariant sections, but it is not just about "ESR was a mean guy to RMS". Indeed, the FSF has had similar clauses in their documentation licences since long before the Open Source flap. What it's really about is 1. RMS feels very strongly about the importance of spreading his philosophy (indeed, the GPL itself has an "invariant output" clause to this end, 2c); and 2. he considers (quite rightly in my mind) that the ethical considerations for programs and documentation are different, so that it is acceptible to place a few extra restrictions on distributing modified documentation. RMS has explained these beliefs himself.

FSF's viewpoint anyone?

Posted Jan 15, 2006 0:34 UTC (Sun) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385) [Link]

My copy of the GPLv2 clause 2c reads like this:

If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

I don't see the word "invariant" there...it just describes the nature of the output, and doesn't require identical copying of any particular text. In fact, it explicitly allows changing the text if you are (or are not) providing a warranty.

FSF's viewpoint anyone?

Posted Jan 16, 2006 6:13 UTC (Mon) by pimlott (guest, #1535) [Link]

I don't see the word "invariant" there

I put it in quotes to suggest that the spirit of GPL 2c (from the FSF's perspective) is similar to invariant sections in the GFDL, in that there is some specific message the modified program must convey; even though as you say it need not be preserved verbatim. The required announcement can be seen as a political statement (not just a legal statement). Anyway, I didn't mean to suggest more than a rough analogy.