On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 20:20 +0100, Eneko Lacunza wrote:
And I'm speaking about Free Documentation. Nobody is saying that the GFDL is a free software license. Since we are speaking about two different things, we obviously cannot agree on anything. :-)
Why is different the "free" as in freedom concept for documentation from the concept of "free" as in freedom for "software"?
I think the GFDL was designed with some pretty narrow use cases in mind - there is definitely a lot of documentation it's not suitable for. But, that's not to say we should treat documentation the same as we treat software all the time (though often we probably could/should).
If you look how documentation is treated as software, it only really makes some sense in the digital world - e.g., GPL'ing docs. I would struggle to define a paperback book as any of source code, object code or executable - and in that sense, printing a GPL'd book is problematic.
It also doesn't address specific non-electronic-format rights you might like - for example, the GFDL makes explicit the ability to lend. The GPL doesn't give you that right. If you can't lend a GPL'd paperback, is it still "free"? If you didn't create it electronically, is it "free"? (probably not; it forces others to re-type the whole thing into electronic format in order to fulfil the source availability clauses).
Also, even in the electronic world, documents and software are treated differently, as a matter of law if nothing else. So, for example, in this country I have in inalienable right to be identified as the author of any given document I may have created - with software, that's not the case. On at least a practical level, we need to take those differences into account.
There is people that thinks software is the conjuction of programs and their documentation (and other thing, like images, etc.). For example, Debian project seems to think this way.
Well, Debian have a specific problem domain: e.g., they're putting stuff onto CD, and want to be able to distribute it. And that's fair enough, and there's a lot of mileage in treating electronic documents the same as software. Having consistent licensing terms across everything they distribute makes pretty obvious sense.
Cheers,
Alex.