On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 23:35:29 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
It can't be proved because it's not true, which is another reason that amendment shouldn't win. Others use those options, such as http://www.dwheeler.com/secure-programs/Secure-Programs-HOWTO/about-license....
Thanks for these links, I wasn't aware of their existence. I consider this one as an abuse of the GFDL -- the invariant sections should contain information that the author considers *important*. In this case the author thinks that he's very important, so I won't use his manual. A more serious flaw is the title "Secure programming for Linux". Obviously he thinks that Linux is an operating system, which is a delusion.
Some even abuse them to make the whole document uneditable, like http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Wearable-HOWTO-23.html
Another abuse of the GFDL. Note that during the debate we (the proponents of the "GFDL is free") pointed out several times that in some cases manuals under this licence may be non-free -- if I include a section about pornography, or drug abuse, for example. In this particular case some may consider the above manual free, some may not. In a similar way, if I include patented algorithms in my GPL'ed program, it won't be free in some countries.
or even some GNU maintainers until debian developers noticed like http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/12/msg00389.html
This is clearly a mistake which RMS has acknowledged. The invariant sections may be only "secondary".
http://www.ljudmila.org/~jaromil/hasciicam/hasciicam.html is interesting. Another FDL-misuse repaired with debian's help in http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=292231
This a most prominent abuse of the licence.
Personally, I think FSF got extra-friendly treatment, with years spent trying to negotiate before that vote was taken.
This is an interesting view :-)
Debian just wanted to do this anyway, it was not campaign for freedom -- otherwise you could have started by removing the *really* non-free bits.
You may have noticed, we tried to do that before voting on FDL. http://www.fr.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_002
Not hard enough, unfortunately.
Look, let's not repeat the whole GFDL debate. Fortunately only a few people (the DDs that voted for it) have such perverted logic. If you think that the GNU Manifesto is adware, I can only say that there is a huge precipice between us. If you think that you can impose your (the project's) view to other distributions to make that decision more legitimate, it's not going to happen. You have no idea how ridiculous it looks -- a priest teaching us about the foundations of Christianity while at the same time committing serial murders (yes, for a Free Software activist, I consider distributing non-free software the same as drug dealing or a crime of similar magnitude).
I'll still continue to licence my manuals under GNU FDL, a free licence, acknowledged as free by the majority of the Free Community.