“Richard Stallman is pushing an anti-free license for documentation. By that, I mean, a license for documentation which, if it were used for software, would unquestionably be understood as unfree” Thomas Bushnell said and got “dismissed” by RMS from the HURD project.
Thomas Bushnell Leaves HURD
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Eugenia Loli
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Is that a bad thing? It seems to be good for GNU and Linux. What it looks like he is doing on the documentation issue is making sure that if I write a manual, some “author” can grab examples and paragraphs if I don’t want them too. It seems like it is in the GNU spirit. The creator knows that his creation will ive forever. I guess someone never looked it from that viewpoint and thinks that GNU is only about free code.
A lot of noise about nothing. Richard Stallman has made it clear for a long time that software licenses and copyright is very different from that of documents.
Why? Because it is impossible to ascertain the authorship and the authoritativeness of a document if anybody can change it.
Words in a document and instructions of a software program fulfill two very different goals. The goal of the former is to convey ideas clearly, that of the latter is to convey functionality efficiently.
Functionality is far more measurable than expressive content. Beyond this, the reason why free software requires a license such as the GPL is because some moron decided that software ideas are patentable, while words simply aren’t.
Words and works of literature are protected by copyright, but no one has had the audacity to claim that a string of certain words or a certain paragraph combination should be patentable.
Thomas Bushnell displays a very poor understanding of the GPL and of the long-standing policies of the free software foundation. R. Stallman’s position on the issue of documentation has remained consistent for as long as I can remember. It is understandable to expect that someone who undertakes to work on one of the main projects of the FSF, GNU/Hurd, will be familiar with the FSF’s long standing policies.
Thomas Bushnell’s speech has not been censored in any manner, otherwise we would have not read or heard about his position on this issue. But it is normal and I would say desirable that people who do not agree with an established policy of an institution part ways if they cannot reconcile themselves with that position.
In summary, I think Bushnell is dramatizing this situation and misrepresenting to the public and he is doing so in full knowledge that there Richard Stallman is a public figure with a large number of detractors who will pray on Bushnell’s theatrics to further their own position against Richard Stallman and against the philosophy of the free software foundation.
I see this as a non issue. Documentation authors may choose whichever license they wish. So if an author does wish to restrict how his materal is used, he’s within his rights to do so.
Although I find it ironic that an organization that’s all about free wants to restrict the documentation??
That doesn’t make much sense at all. Software NEEDS documentaion, and free software should have free documentation. What happens if someone decides to stop maintaining their software and docs, and someone else steps in and continues deveopement of said software? They’d have to go the trouble of re-writing the docs and worry about the legal implications if their version too closely resembles those of the original version. Which seems likely since both documents are about the exact same piece of software.
So I have no idea where Stallman is coming from on this one… But he’s always been a bit on the “odd” side eh.
Do you know what single address space OS and microkernels can do?
Is future dead?
🙂
The GNU FDL is much more problematic than you think. Debian has put togehter a document that describes their concerns about this license:
http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml
“That doesn’t make much sense at all. Software NEEDS documentaion, and free software should have free documentation..”
There’s nothing about invariant sections that make it unfree. If I quote someone/something, I don’t have the right to modify (other than reformatting) that quote (without permission); I certainly can’t give _you_ the right to modify that quote, but I might need to include it. The rest of GFDL is a pretty standard free license.
The title said he leaves the project and the last sentences of the news said he had been ‘fired’ from the project. The linked mail is not really helpful too (I do not read Italian).
In summary, I think Bushnell is dramatizing this situation and misrepresenting to the public and he is doing so in full knowledge that there Richard Stallman is a public figure with a large number of detractors who will pray on Bushnell’s theatrics to further their own position against Richard Stallman and against the philosophy of the free software foundation.
Given that he was a volunteer the burden of proof is on _you_ to show that he is doing this to somehow “show up” RMS. The fact that RMS is a public figure with many detractors means nothing in this context. And to imply that now Bushnell is now against the FSF (ie, this is _only_ personal) is the typical lapdog position for the unquestioning supporters of the FSF. Others eloquently point out here that Bushnell is not the only ones with qualms over the doc license. But you make this (very typical) speech that this is the “theatrics” of someone out to discredit RMS and the FSF.
Seems to me that only basis you have for the accusation that he is a mere “mudslinger” is that it “takes one to know one” (which from your post, seems exactly correct). When the FSF stops acting like an archdiocese with the powers of excommunication it may gain more than a little respect from the wary (and weary).
Of course, I simply don’t GET IT, right?
>>Words in a document and instructions of a software program fulfill two very different goals. The goal of the former is to convey ideas clearly, that of the latter is to convey functionality efficiently. <<
You’re missing your own point. They are both documents. They both convey information to the reader. What that information is does not matter. There is nothing preventing someone from releasing code under the GFDL.
A lot of noise about nothing. Richard Stallman has made it clear for a long time that software licenses and copyright is very different from that of documents.
I think I’ll just quote him on this one:
The criterion for a free manual is pretty much the same as for free software: it is a matter of giving all users certain freedoms. Redistribution (including commercial redistribution) must be permitted, so that the manual can accompany every copy of the program, on-line or on paper. Permission for modification is crucial too.
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-doc.html
The next paragraph makes a distinction between manuals/software documentation and articles in general, and states that free software and free documentation are different, but in the end it comes down to redistribution and the ability to modify.
He also goes on to make notes that there are things that should be left as is, such as copyright attribution, authorship, and non-technical details.
The point that Thomas Bushnell’s discussion of the license missed was simply that ‘Invariant Sections’ are not permitted to be technical material. The problem, though, is that although Invariant Sections do not address the technical material, they cannot be removed for any reason, nor modified. This is fine for most purposes, but there could be some occasions under which removal makes sense, such as quoting sections (with proper attribution) of the text. In many of these cases, though, regardless of what license it’s released under, the person doing the quoting has every right to do so without the invariant text and would be covered under the law.
Something he did point out quite well, and with quite strong understanding of the license terms, though, is that you can not place the manual or sections of the manual in your code.
Why? Because it is impossible to ascertain the authorship and the authoritativeness of a document if anybody can change it.
This seems rather strange, because people can ascertain the authorship and authoritativeness of a document quite well without any copyright notice whatsoever, let alone additional restrictions or rights attributions. This is done all the time, any time someone needs to actually know these things about whatever they happen to be reading.
Words in a document and instructions of a software program fulfill two very different goals. The goal of the former is to convey ideas clearly, that of the latter is to convey functionality efficiently.
Functionality is far more measurable than expressive content. Beyond this, the reason why free software requires a license such as the GPL is because some moron decided that software ideas are patentable, while words simply aren’t.
We’re talking about technical documentation and manuals here, not expressive content. This kind of documentation has two major factors: functionality and whether or not the reader understands what is written. As for the GPL, it has nothing to do with patents, and everything to do with the idea of software licensing, the idea that a software developer can write a piece of software and not allow the end-user to modify or copy that software. Software patents are certainly something the FSF does not agree with, but if you read the information they have regarding why the GPL exists, it’s quite clear that they’re more concerned about the way copyright is applied to software than patents.
Words and works of literature are protected by copyright, but no one has had the audacity to claim that a string of certain words or a certain paragraph combination should be patentable.
Nor do they try to claim that if you use one sentence you must include however many others they decide must be included.
Thomas Bushnell displays a very poor understanding of the GPL and of the long-standing policies of the free software foundation. R. Stallman’s position on the issue of documentation has remained consistent for as long as I can remember. It is understandable to expect that someone who undertakes to work on one of the main projects of the FSF, GNU/Hurd, will be familiar with the FSF’s long standing policies.
The document doesn’t even discuss the GPL, so I don’t know how he displays a poor understanding of the GPL in the document cited here. Frankly, I feel that the FDL is at least somewhat consistent with the GPL, but the problems with the license are much more apparent when applied to documentation.
Thomas Bushnell’s speech has not been censored in any manner, otherwise we would have not read or heard about his position on this issue. But it is normal and I would say desirable that people who do not agree with an established policy of an institution part ways if they cannot reconcile themselves with that position.
Since he didn’t mention censorship explicitly, but rather RMS’ wish to control the speech of a GNU maintainer. Since he is no longer a GNU maintainer, due to being dismissed because of his previous discussions of the issue, it’s safe to say that we would have read/heard about it, unless he had somehow convinced RMS to let him stay on (ie agreed with RMS’ policies). I do agree that people who do not agree with a policy part ways with that institution, but at the same time, the policy appears to be in direct opposition with the entire foundation of that institution. When a company or institution requests comments on something like a license or product, one would hope that members of that company or institution could comment trutfully without worrying about their job.
In summary, I think Bushnell is dramatizing this situation and misrepresenting to the public and he is doing so in full knowledge that there Richard Stallman is a public figure with a large number of detractors who will pray on Bushnell’s theatrics to further their own position against Richard Stallman and against the philosophy of the free software foundation.
Perhaps this is the case, or perhaps he is simply stating his own view of the situation. I think that of the entire statement, there are only a few points that detractors could really grab onto, while the rest of the document has to be read against the actual terms of the license.
Mumic, there is no need to resort to personal attacks. My impression from reading Thomas’s post is that he was interesting in painting RMS with a broad brush rather than address their differences regarding the licensing of documentation. I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that the Debian folks have dealt with this issue much more professionally.
What about the following is unreasonable?
“While a blanket prohibition on modification is unacceptable, some kinds of limits on the method of modification pose no problem. For example, requirements to preserve the original author’s copyright notice, the distribution terms, or the list of authors, are ok. It is also no problem to require modified versions to include notice that they were modified, even to have entire sections that may not be deleted or changed, as long as these sections deal with nontechnical topics. (Some GNU manuals have them.)
These kinds of restrictions are not a problem because, as a practical matter, they don’t stop the conscientious programmer from adapting the manual to fit the modified program. In other words, they don’t block the free software community from making full use of the manual.
However, it must be possible to modify all the technical content of the manual, and then distribute the result in all the usual media, through all the usual channels; otherwise, the restrictions do block the community, the manual is not free, and so we need another manual.”
Let me reiterate my position a bit more clearly, if I may. Scholarship is facilitated by being able to establish and study the authorship of a document and its development over time. This becomes particularly important for the non-technical parts of a manual as we may be interested to know what drove someone to participate in a project or what the original goals of the project were. I think that the request to retain these non-technical parts is entirely reasonable.
What is at the hart of this disagreement is the issue over invariant parts of text that need to be reproduced in their entirety. I believe that this allows a document to be identified as part of a genealogy of documents, to have a historiography of how the document came about.
Finally, since fair use allows somebody to cite from another documents and since the author of documentation packages that accompany a piece of software could resort to a different license for their software, such as one of the Creative Commons Licenses, I fail to see how this is a serious issue.
Finally, to the extent that both the GPL and the FGDL put emphasis on establishing the authorship of the code or document and on the use of proper attribution, there is a certain consistency in requiring that certain portions of a document remain unchaged, i.e., non-technical ones, as long as you can change the rest.
The poster of the message on the italian list wrote :
TRANSLATED TEXT (with google help 😉
I notice unfortunately, too much late, that I have made an error posting that message here: it was a message passed on an inner list, what that on the moment I didn’t noticed, and the author, which I have port my excuses, did not mean to raise powder. Just in order to make you to know it.
ORIGINAL TEXT :
Mi accorgo, troppo tardi purtroppo, che ho fatto una sciocchezza
proseguendo quel messaggio qui: si trattava di un messaggio passato su
una lista interna, cosa che sul momento mi era sfuggita, e l’autore, cui
ho porto le mie scuse, non intendeva sollevare polvere.
Giusto per farvelo sapere.
The title said he leaves the project and the last sentences of the news said he had been ‘fired’ from the project. The linked mail is not really helpful too (I do not read Italian).
None of the other Italian messages would clarify your confusion, but “leaving” is implied by “being dismissed”.
“RMS has now “dismissed” me as Hurd maintainer because I have publicly spoken against the GFDL, saying that a GNU maintainer must support and speak in favor of GNU policies.”
Yeah, stick it to him Mr. Bush… I mean RMS!
There’s always something scary about an “either your with us or against us” mentality…
The story is not based on an error; “sciochezze” does not mean error in the sense you think. To emphasize this, my translation (looser, but closer to the meaning) would be:
I realize, although it is too late now, that it was foolish of me to forward the message here. The message came through an internal list, a fact that escaped me at the time. The author, to whom I express my apologies, did not intend to cause a stir.
It would be fair to let you know.
I learned Italian at a young age (my mother is Italian) and I correspond regularly with Italians & visit the country, but I could be wrong. I would welcome correction by a native speaker.
> I would welcome correction by a native speaker.
I’m italian, and your translation is perfect!
…this d00d has been a problem with the Hurd from day one it is surprising he wasn’t kicked off the hurd sooner…
So you have some examples of this?
I hope that the new maintainer changes the name to something more palateable. Hurd just sounds awful. I suspect hardcore GNU types think it sounds cool though.
It will be put up or shut up time for Stallman soon enough. While Perens, Torvalds, and ESR are actully doing something about or at least speaking out against SCO, he’s busy having spats w/ his Hurd developers.
I’m sure he did a lot for free software back in the day but I haven’t seen him do anything worth speaking of for a long time rather than rail on about his philosophy and pronounciation of certain terms.
That was what i was going to say! man, I think RMS sux. (sorry for GNU hardcore geeks and RMS fans, but this is only my own opinion.) He always use the word ‘Free’ but it’s not really ‘Free’ (as in BSD i mean) huh? I guess it’s better to name it GRDL the GNU Restricted Documentation License :p
You can compare BSD to a pure democracy and the GPL to a republic. A republic is a democracy with some starting rules. A democracy by itself is mob rule. In this case… the starting rules for the GPL help to ensure a community where as BSD lets even Microsoft sell and modify your code as proprietary software. There is no community created.
Considering that HURD is going nowhere fast I’m inclined to not care.
The Hurd project isn’t going anywhere anyways. It’s pretty much vapor ware as a useful operating system.
Bullshit. The BSD license is free for you to do what you want whereas the GPL puts RESTRICTIONS on the software.
As far as the community, BSD has a much tighter community w/ more well defined goals. The end product may not be as user friendly but it is more stable and secure. FreeBSD developers control the whole OS, not just the kernel like Torvalds and Linux. For a while (2.2, I think) Linux was playing catchup w/ BSDs and I’m pretty sure there’s quite a bit of reworked BSD code in Linux which is FINE w/ the BSD license and BSD developers.
You don’t need RMS as dictator to protect what you write. That’s what copyright law is all about. If RMS is really just trying to protect the rights of authors, he’s re-inventing copyright.
Rather ironic, don’t you think.
Has RMS made a public comment about this? If so, where can one read it?
“Bullshit. The BSD license is free for you to do what you want whereas the GPL puts RESTRICTIONS on the software.”
Well either you don’t know the meaning of the word rules or you didn’t read a word I said.
“As far as the community, BSD has a much tighter community w/ more well defined goals.”
Also a much smaller community. As I said, one purpose of the GPL is to ensure a community. It has created a large one dedicated to Free Software.
Look at how BSD handles copyright notices, and compare that the the GRDL…The GRDL goes considerably farther than the BSD license! The BSD license only requires that you not remove the copyright notice of the University [or whoever the author may be] The problem that Debian and other groups have is that limits to what is invariate are not specified….I could include a letter to my girlfriend… Yes, restraint is SUGGESTED, but it would have been better to define exactly what is INCLUDED as invariant rather than leaving the gates wide open for abuse.
Abuse which you can’t fix without abusing the license…get the idea. This license will create a problem which will be difficult [if not impossible] to fix in the future…imagine 100 authors adding invariate sections to manuals…they would become unreadable… The problem is that this license is not one which will hold up in common practice over time…and the “detractors” want a license that everybody can live with, now and forever…without deciding to ignore it when certian people abuse it! They want a sure-fire thing…not just a good idea. In that respect the GRDL falls flat…
BSD does not create a community. Any community created is superfluous.
“First, GFDL’d manuals can contain “invariant sections” which cannot be changed or removed.”
If that is true then this license needs to be fixed. Thats a terrible idea… Why can’t it be setup so people could completely strip these “invariant sections”?
Well either you don’t know the meaning of the word rules or you didn’t read a word I said.
You GNU zealots need to realise that some people don’t subscribe to GNU’s semantics of the word “free”
It worries me that when I read the hurd dev lists, I don’t have a clue what they are talking about, but with Linux I can bang together a few shell scripts and get my ideas kinda working.
The whole microkernel arch looks very flexible, but is it too complex for the average hacker to play with?
The result of this is that I really *need* good documentation, so to hear of (in my mind) pointless arguments about licences is very bad.
Are you on crack? I didn’t say BSD *creates* a community and I don’t know where you’re going w/ that one and I don’t care. Apparently BSDs are doing something right according to Netcraft (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html) I note that there’s no Linux entries there.
Anyway, who cares if it’s a smaller community? It *works* The end product is more stable and more secure.
“You GNU zealots need to realise that some people don’t subscribe to GNU’s semantics of the word “free””
I was referring to the word rules.. Not the word free. Rules are restrictions. You said “the GPL puts RESTRICTIONS on the software”. I say thats bloody obvious. I also say it’s as free as any republic. You would not want to live in a government with no rules would you? if so.. you should read 1984.
Anyways.. funny that you should bring up the semantics of GNU in reguard to the word Free. I’m pretty sure they think BSD is a Free Software licence compatable with the GPL, just not an ideal one.
RMS main problem seems to be that the GPL took off with Linux, but the more restrictive [i.e. more holy?] GNU path has fallen by the wayside. One other problem that I see with GRDL is the question: “What will GPL 3.0 look like?”
What will RMS do with GPL 3.0? If the GRDL is any indication, we could be in for more trouble, not less. It’s more than clear that he’s willing to shift all the “GNU” stuff over to much more draconian licenses, just to “make his point” with the Linux people that don’t necessarly use GNU for everything. The biggest problem is that he’s not listening to WHY people don’t want the current GRDL, and writing them off as “detractors”. This GRDL, along with the frequency he’s been kicking out GNU programs lately [and the reasons why, he kicked out ghostscript for doing something similar in their programs!] is looking like trouble…
More than just trouble is the timing of it all…these arguments are HURTING OSS not helping it! Now is the time when we need businesses to look seriously at GPL and other OSS licenses and a good thing. The “shotgun” approach RMS is seeming to take lately is going to hurt things rather than help them…it’s almost like he’s TRYING to tank OSS right now because it’s not going EXACTLY his way.
welcome our new Restrictive License Overlords. They will accomplish much to let documentation and ideas flourish and grow.
“I didn’t say BSD *creates* a community and I don’t know where you’re going w/ that one and I don’t care.”
Alas, *I* said that…
“A ‘Secondary Section’ is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document’s overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.”
“The ‘Invariant Sections’ are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not allowed to be designated as Invariant. The Document may contain zero Invariant Sections. If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none.”
Notice, Invariant Sections _must_ be Secondary Sections and thus cannot be superfluous or be the instructions (in a manual).
Where are those “invariant” sections…if your going to quote a GRDL document…you gotta have um!
Ha…now I’m in violation too! because I’m creating a “derivitive post” from your “violating” post….stop the madness!
The main reason I choose them as an example is that GNU kicked them out for doing just such a thing in their code. They were releasing an old version under GPL and putting “invariant” sections [advertizements] in the GPL parts. RMS didn’t like that! …yet wants to push the VERY SAME THING on everyone with the GRDL!
What happens when people start putting racist remarks [i.e. political/ethical] or personal info [i.e. YOUR credit card number?] in to these documents…that may even cause the document to become illegal in some locales? What if MS or SCO was to get a hold of key manuals and vastly improve them…and call every body “infringing S.O.B.s” in the “invariant” sections.
Most of all, who is going to limit this? Can the maintainer of a program accept my manual, but hack out remarks [per insulting remarks, or just too many] Then they wouldn’t be part of the “offical” file, but part of my changes…did he infrige my rignt…or not… Can we ever pull out remarks that are offensive…there doesn’t seem to be room to “vote” on it, does there. Or can I go thru every man page reformatting it to make it pretty..and adding racial slurs to it… Get the idea…
That’s why this is a very bad idea..if they want to protect “authors” then limit them to 500 characters or just names and PGP keys…
As much as I’m an evil GNU RMS playa hater zealot (-; I have to agree with you… A license should be impervious to such obvious forms of attack… I’m not sure how this logical loophole was left.
Because then it wouldn’t be free. Or entertaining. It’s always fun to put shennanigans in a license over at gnu.org.
For example:
(repeated loudly, and typed in bold text”
“Of course you can use GPL software in closed source applications”
(small font, several pages down)
“…as long as you don’t distribute the software”
“The software is free.”
“Why am I paying for it?”
“Oh the source code is free, the software still costs money.”
If you disagree with the GPDFL, whatever you do – DO NOT make an invariant section in your document describing why. Because then, it could never be removed.
he got kicked from a dead project which has been dead for years already?? What will the poor folk use for their operating systems then?!
> There’s nothing about invariant sections that make it
> unfree. If I quote someone/something, I don’t have the right
> to modify (other than reformatting) that quote (without
> permission); I certainly can’t give _you_ the right to
> modify that quote, but I might need to include it. The rest
> of GFDL is a pretty standard free license.
Licenses don’t have to cover that, that’s pretty much already covered by any decent legal system: you can’t misquote anyone, or else expect to be sued if you did someone any damages with that misquote.
Here we’re talking about the fact that if I need to include only a single function’s documentation then I might be forced to include the documentation for all other functions as well, just because that function’s documentation together with the other ones might be an “invariant”. This is just nonsensical and pretty much non free.
Apparently BSDs are doing something right according to Netcraft (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html) I note that there’s no Linux entries there.
That could be because of the 497 days uptime reset thing. Supposedly, older BSDs don’t cycle uptime, unlike linux and recent freebsds. More info here:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/accuracy.html#cycle
Bushnell got bushwacked.
This why OSS software will never be truly successful. While all the propents sit around and yell at each other about politicts, sematics and software community philosphy’s. Companies like Microsoft (who have to answer to shareholders) keep chugging away and turning a PROFIT.
Like many leftists (even in the source code world), he cares little about true freedom(see BSD) and more about control(see GNU).
The GUN licenses and their ilk always require you to use HIS license. This isnt freedom.
Flame away, I still have a point.
Thomas Bushnell displays a very poor understanding of the GPL and of the long-standing policies of the free software foundation.
I was waiting for this one. This is the default position of FSF for _everything_ and _everyone_ that disagrees with the GPL or the FSF. It seems that if you disagree you are simply not quite bright enough to understand the GPL’s complexity. The FSF has been (unjustly) labeled “communist” in the past. But the way they deal with detractors _indeed_ harkens back to the USSR, where disagreement with the party was ipso facto proof of mental illness.
No, Bushnell understands the position _exactly_ and is not as dense as the FSF would have you believe. But of course, since he is refusing to drink his whole glass of Koolaid he will be punished.
I am appalled at the moderation. If somebody here was calling Bill Gates names and denigrating his work, the comments would be moderated down.
Since RMS is the subject of the ongoing witchcraft of today’s technology world, it is quite okay.
These articles bring out the worst in people. What joy do you people get out of misrepresenting the GPL and the work of the FSF? Are you all paid shills?
Have a look at the this and tell me that the work of the FSF does not merit our support?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/audio/audio.html
When the FSF doesn’t insult the intelligence of its detractors by implying that either 1) they can’t read, or 2) they are too dense to know the implied AS WELL as the stated meaning of the GNU documents then I shall soften my stance. Credit goes to RMS for Emacs and a host of other things, but his dictatorial streak is well documented.
As far as your “shill” comment, I use nothing but Linux but am switching to BSD. MS is IMO a monopolistic company with unhealthy strangleholds on whole computer markets. But that DOES NOT obsolve the FSF of the responsibility to explain why the common computer programmer should trade one dictatorship for another.
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3058/1/
As stated above by someone else – fire away.
Here we’re talking about the fact that if I need to include only a single function’s documentation then I might be forced to include the documentation for all other functions as well, just because that function’s documentation together with the other ones might be an “invariant”. This is just nonsensical and pretty much non free.
Bushnell even points out a very good example: emacs.
If you quote one thing from the man page for emacs, you also have to quote the following:
The GNU Manifesto
The GPL
The section titled ‘Distribution’ which is approximately 6 paragraphs.
Additionally, whatever you are quoting it in has to be released under the same license, thereby requiring you to also include the license.
Of course, there are fair use clauses in most countries which will make this requirement non-existent under certain conditions, but if you wanted to copy the functional portions of the manual into the code as comments, you’d be sol, since the code is covered under the GPL and the manual is covered under the GFDL, and the two are incompatible (copying GFDL’d documentation into GPL’d source code is impossible because the GFDL requires copies to be under the GFDL and the GPL requires copies to be under the GPL).
See I told you you don’t like badmouthing RMS. This place seems more and more like a tech version of the Fox news channel. Maybe we need a tech flame site to avoid this type of one sided discussions.
There are so many restrictions and regulations to GNU code and documentation use. Is it really free? Free as in speech and beer, yes. But not free as in free use. Use BSD code and spend your time developing instead of interpreting licensing legalese.
I don’t know who is on the right and who is on the wrong here but this is not what bothers me. I just can’t believe that such an issue could not have been resolved in peace. I guess that RMS, over the years, has become a little tired and thus a bit crunky … and who can blame him?? He has been going through more than an “awful lot” for nearly 20 years now. It’s not an easy thing. It never was. I just wish he could keep his temper or something. All these are just so sad …
yes
“Apparently BSDs are doing something right according to Netcraft (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html) I note that there’s no Linux entries there.”
First of all uptime is easy to manipulate. IIRC it was via sysctl. I even had a broken uptime on my OpenBSD box for a few time, claiming it had over 300 days uptime while it was a few weeks.
Second, *BSD != *BSD. They’re not all the same.
Third, even if an uptime is truth, it doesn’t say a lot. Not all bopxes need to be 24/7. A reboot which implies a security patch, eventually means it’s Good and when the box was only down for a few minutes the admin did a better job than say an adminm with 500 days uptime and a remotely compromisable kernel. Just an example, there are lots of more possibilities.
Fourth, i’m aware of recent security patches in the FreeBSD 4.x series which mean one has to patch and reboot in order to be secure from a DoS attack.
“Maybe we need a tech flame site to avoid this type of one sided discussions.”
We already have one. It’s called Slashdot. 😉
>The GNU FDL is much more problematic than you think.
>Debian has put togehter a document that describes their
>concerns about this license:
Why get their knickers in a twist over some new license? I am sure there are dozens of other licenses they don’t approve of either… I don’t see similar documents on their site about those.
It’s not that people hate RMS…really it’s not. But he seems to be “shooting himself in the foot” lately!
Pressing thru wildly unpopular licenses & canning detractors is not the way to build a community. Part of the problem is the “benevolent dictatorship” model of the GNU. It’s great for getting things done…until the guy at the top starts openly dissagreeing with the people beneath him. RMS is also a bit of a “prophet”…and we all know prophets have a hard time getting respect at home!
“Prophets” by nature have a hard time accepting the “good times” which is RIGHT NOW for OSS! They tend to think in ideals, constantly struggling aginst the “forces of…” and miss how far things have really come…and ENJOY IT.
Time is proving that the GPL was an extremely wise decision! And now we’re starting to see the fruits of it, as well as variations of the same theme in other licenses…maybe not as extreme…but working for “freedom of software” OSS is rapidly becomming a very good way to do business…and I think that scares him…one of the things he seems to rail against the most. Recent history makes it look like he is TRYING to shoot down other people’s OSS because they are more “liberal” in their terms than he is, or rather, trying to make his “baby” unappealing to al but the most die-hard “free” software fans.
Why get their knickers in a twist over some new license?
Because if RMS gets his way, ALL GNU projects will start to use that as their sole documentation license! THAT is a problem….because a huge portion of Linux and other OSS uses GNU parts.
He’s already started tossing maintainers that don’t want to comply…hence the article!