* Alfred M. Szmidt ams@gnu.org [060216 20:24]:
I think you are trying to put documentation and programs into one box.
No, I'm telling that you cannot put programs and documentation shipped electronical in different boxes.
One should always examine what kind of work one is handling before licensing it. Sometimes it makes sense to use the modifed-BSD license, sometimes the Lesser GPL, sometimes the GPL. Same applies for `text', some `text' is better to be under the GPL, some is better to be under the GFDL.
The problem with your analogy is, that BSD, LGPL and GPL are all free, they only differ in how they protect against non-free stuff. The GFDL is different, in that if applied to programs it is simply non-free. It can be better for you to license something non-free, but I do not want to use it or recommend its usage.
Well, the need for freedoms for program source code is not clear either. Many people distpute that.
How are the freedoms for program source code not clear? I should be able to control what my machine does, what it does, and tell people what it did.
And change what it does and distribute it to others. But there are people telling me that is not needed for programs, and there are people like you telling me it is not needed for documention.
The free software licenses do. The FDL does not allow modification in reasonable ways. (plus has some glitches with copying).
How doesn't it allow for it in a reasonable way? Last time I checked, I could modify a document in anyway I choose.
Now, let's take some example. Let's take the documentation of some protocol, assume it is only available as FDL. I want to write a protocoll sniffer for that protocol, so I take the tables for the different events and their structure from the documentation, use some editor macros and some hand-editing to make it a program source for a package printer. Thus I get source code for a program which I have only available as FDL. (And FDL for source is unsuitable, as for example I'll have problems getting it into some embedded chip with the whole license and perhaps some additional licenses in it).
And despite the fact that the documentation in that case was not FDL but something BSD-like so it was no problem.
I think we agree here, I think. But documentation isn't functional.
I think that is the main point of difference. I know that it is most probably not the same "functional" you meant here, but I want to quote the preamble of the GFDL: 'The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" ...'
A documentation unrelated to a program is useless. If it is related it should not be separated. It's reasonable to expect stuff will move the one way or the other. A good small definition or description from the comments of a program is often a nice sentence in the documentation. A good short description from the documentation can sometimes be added as commentary in the program. Documentation source might include machine readable stuff to be transformed by some scripts or even human to code parts. Programs might get tooltips built in containing stuff from the documentation. Some part of documentation could be rewritten using an auto-generated stuff or docstrings or something like this from the code. There is exchange between them, and incompatible licenses make this impossible. Thus a license for documentation needs to be includeable in some free software license to be free.
How can more freedom to change what I wrote be good? Would you be ok if you for example wrote "I Bernhard R. Link like dragons", and then someone comes and changes this (the text is licensed under the GPL or similar) to "I Bernhard R. Link hate freedom"? I don't think anyone has such a right.
There are laws against slander and other things like that coping with your example. But also for manifestos and personal opinions freedom is a useful thing. Other people might want to write manifestos too, and might want to express their opinion. Having to formulate them all from scratch is quite some work, and allowing people to save time is in general good. (Of course sometimes you like not to be good to persons you do not like, or that want to harm you. I do not want to say that such things should be free, only that it is nicer if they are.)
Anything that is of a digital nature is sensible to include in an OS. This does not mean that you, or anyone, should have the right to change for example the GNU manifest to state something entierly different, while still making it sound as if it is the GNU project who wrote it.
Again, writing something making it soundas if someone else wrote it is libel or slander or any other such term layers might use and totaly unrelated to copyright. My software licenses to not include conditions that people using it may not torture, kill people or even not break the law. That's the duty of law to make sure, not of copyright provisions.
I find it quite easy: Computer runs program, human reads text. I would like to see a single human who can actually run a program of sufficent size.
But humans read computer programs. (And with free software that is an important part of programs). And documentation is first read by computers, too.
Bernhard R. Link