Re: I am ANGRY with Debian.

On 5/31/07, Marty <martyb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Michael Marsh wrote:
> Given one particular invariant section that always appears in FSF/GNU
> GFDL'ed documentation, my preferred analogy is, "You can't skip the
> commercials."

Except that in this case, the "commercial" is from the document's author. A
slightly better analogy is the advertising clause of BSD license, which *is*
considered a free license. In my opinion, all the analogies fall short because
documentation is not software, regardless of Debian's dogmatic claims to the
contrary.

True, and all analogies are imperfect. However, the advertisement has
to remain regardless of how far the documentation eventually deviates
from the original. This is true of the original BSD license, as well.
If the free software community adopts the GFDL with invariant
sections in substantial numbers, then presumably Debian will
eventually have to bow to public pressure and treat documentation by
different rules than software.

--
Michael A. Marsh
http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~mmarsh
http://mamarsh.blogspot.com
http://36pints.blogspot.com


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