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A new GPLv3 timetableA new GPLv3 timetablePosted Mar 28, 2007 2:01 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338)In reply to: A new GPLv3 timetable by flewellyn Parent article: A new GPLv3 timetable
>They're leery of it because of the "front-cover text", "back-cover text", and "invariant section" clauses.
That's not entirely complete... a good bit of reading for those that are interested is the summary prepared by debian-legal back during the original debate:
Invariant sections are the most gratuitous way that the GFDL is DFSG-non-free, but a lot of reasonable people believe that it still isn't DFSG-free even when there are no invariant sections. This isn't the official position of the Debian project -- they decided that only invariant sections are a problem -- but that's not because the debian-legal denizens reached this as consensus, but rather that the project as a whole held a popular vote and the majority declared that it was free by fiat. I'm not entirely impressed by this. I find the arguments on that web page compelling, and am anyway more inclined to trust the experts than the popular opinion; if I were a debian developer I would have voted for the GFDL being simply non-free.
Also, even if you do consider the GFDL free, there are a giant list of ways that the GFDL is just obnoxious in practice. (One major one is that it is itself GPL incompatible.) That doesn't matter from a distribution's point of view, but it's important to keep in mind if you are producing a new work and thus have to choose a license. These days I just use GPL for documentation; at least that way I know I can copy and paste between it and the code... (I've not been following the Creative Commons license revisions, does anyone know how acceptable they are these days?) Personally I would strongly recommend against anyone choosing to use the GFDL. At the very least, you should think about it very carefully; I have a huge amount of respect and trust for the FSF, but I think they really screwed this one up.
A similar and thoughtful discussion of these issues that influenced me: http://zwol.livejournal.com/13793.html
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A new GPLv3 timetable Posted Mar 28, 2007 21:28 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] Hm, I wasn't aware of the issues with the DRM section, or with the transparent and opaque sections. I only ever heard about the objections to invariant sections, front covers, and back covers.
That said, I think the new draft SFDL is a better idea, since it doesn't include invariants, front covers, or back covers. I still think FSF could distribute the Manifesto and the license texts as separate, aggregated works.
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