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<BODY style="MARGIN: 4px 4px 1px; FONT: 10pt Tahoma">stallman è impazzito?<BR><BR>>>> pot@softwarelibero.it Tuesday 18 November 2003 >>><BR>Thomas Bushnell è uno dei principali (che io sappia il principale, ma è<BR>un po' che non seguo la cosa) sviluppatore di Hurd.<BR><BR>------- Start of forwarded message -------<BR>Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 11:33:16 -0800<BR>From: <U><A href="mailto:tb@becket.net">tb@becket.net</A></U> (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)<BR>Subject: What's up with the GFDL?<BR>To: <U><A href="mailto:gnu-prog-discuss@gnu.org">gnu-prog-discuss@gnu.org</A></U> <BR>X-Spam-Level: <BR><BR><BR>Richard Stallman is pushing an anti-free license for documentation.<BR>By that, I mean, a license for documentation which, if it were used<BR>for software, would unquestionably be understood as unfree.<BR><BR>There are many negative consequences of this action:<BR><BR>1) The Debian Project, which is committed to free software, cannot<BR>distribute GFDL'd manuals as part of the Debian system. This is<BR>ironic in the extreme, because RMS used to complain that Debian was<BR>too loose about distributing non-free things. Now Debian is too<BR>tight for him.<BR><BR>2) It is not possible to borrow text from a GFDL'd manual and<BR>incorporate it in any free software program whatsoever. This is<BR>not a mere license incompatibility. It's not just that the GFDL is<BR>incompatible with this or that free software license: it's that it<BR>is fundamentally incompatible with *any* free software license<BR>whatsoever. So if you write a new program, and you have no<BR>commitments at all about what license you want to use, saving only<BR>that it be a free license, you cannot include GFDL'd text.<BR><BR>3) The FSF solicited public comment on the GFDL, but this seems to<BR>have been a deceptive enterprise. The goal seems to have been to<BR>garner public support for it, and that simply failed. So the FSF<BR>does not trumpet that little public comment, and has issued no<BR>explanation of why such a widely unpopular documentation license<BR>should be used.<BR><BR>4) RMS has now "dismissed" me as Hurd maintainer because I have<BR>publicly spoken against the GFDL, saying that a GNU maintainer must<BR>support and speak in favor of GNU policies. If this is really<BR>RMS's reason, then it means that he demands the right to control<BR>the speech of every GNU volunteer when it comes to GNU project<BR>policies. He wants not merely to set the direction, but also to<BR>require that each and every one of us publicly support a GNU policy<BR>when asked to.<BR><BR>I do not know what the right response is. I believe perhaps the best<BR>thing to do is to create structures for GNU project volunteers to<BR>express their opinions so that we can even find out what the GNU<BR>project thinks. Heretofore, RMS has been an able spokesman, but when<BR>he disregards the comments of volunteers (even when explicitly<BR>solicited), works against free software, and attempts to control the<BR>speech of GNU volunteers in talking about such issues, something has<BR>gone very wrong.<BR><BR>I suspect that nothing will happen, and the sad result will be that<BR>while free software will continue to thrive, the GNU project will<BR>die. I do not know what would prevent that.<BR><BR>Thomas<BR><BR>Technical Addendum<BR>- ------------------<BR><BR>The incompatibilities of the GFDL with free software are not<BR>controversial. There are two central problems.<BR><BR>First, GFDL'd manuals can contain "invariant sections" which cannot be<BR>changed or removed. This is a restriction on modification which isn't<BR>permitted for free software licenses. Moreover, it is not a trivial<BR>restriction or one that imposes minimal costs. Invariant sections can<BR>be very large, and the pieces of a GFDL'd manual that one wants to<BR>copy might be small. (For example, a description of how to use a<BR>single function, if copied from the Emacs manual, requires the<BR>inclusion of many kilobytes of extraneous text from invariant<BR>sections.) Such restrictions are not allowed in free software<BR>licenses. <BR><BR>Second, there are restrictions on what formats a GFDL'd manual can be<BR>distributed in, which work to prohibit encryption and the like. No<BR>such restriction exists for free software licenses. <BR>------- End of forwarded message -------<BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Discussioni mailing list<BR><U><A href="mailto:Discussioni@softwarelibero.it">Discussioni@softwarelibero.it</A></U> <BR><U><A href="http://lists.softwarelibero.it/mailman/listinfo/discussioni">http://lists.softwarelibero.it/mailman/listinfo/discussioni</A></U> <BR>Totale iscritti: 201 <BR></BODY></HTML>