Thank you for the link! [LWN.net]

Thank you for the link!

Posted Nov 19, 2003 22:11 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104)
In reply to: Why the GFDL? by coriordan
Parent article: Thomas Bushnell is no longer Hurd maintainer

I used to think that GFDL is free enough for Debian and other distibutions but not free enough to be used or endorsed by FSF. Unfortunately, it appears that GFDL is not free at all. What's worse, it can impose certain limitations on the distribution even without any modifications to any documentation under GFDL.

If we some day have a successor to DVD with inherent support for DRM or just encrtyption, it may be impossible to use it for distributing free software because of the documentation. This is extremely unpractical and goes against the goals of free software. Free software is not a religion, and it should be free even on "non-kosher" media, just like it's OK to use it on non-free OSes or to make profit from it.

I believe that the losers in this situation are GNU/Hurd, FSF, RMS and most importantly the documentation of all GNU projects. We should encourage developers to document their works, and this license row does exactly the opposite.

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