From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel,gmane.emacs.xemacs.beta Subject: Re: Permission to use portions of the recent GNU Emacs Manual Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 21:43:43 +0100 Message-ID: References: <01c4dfae$Blat.v2.2.2$263aae60@zahav.net.il> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1102797937 3184 80.91.229.6 (11 Dec 2004 20:45:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 20:45:37 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ben@666.com, Alan Mackenzie , emacs-devel@gnu.org, xemacs-beta@xemacs.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Dec 11 21:45:30 2004 Return-path: Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1CdE7N-0003BV-00 for ; Sat, 11 Dec 2004 21:45:29 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.33) id 1CdEHO-0005nE-Bw for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:55:50 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1CdEGy-0005je-9I for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:55:24 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1CdEGw-0005ii-Sl for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:55:23 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.33) id 1CdEGw-0005iM-Dz for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:55:22 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.164] (helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1CdE5h-00037c-Vs for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:43:46 -0500 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lola.goethe.zz) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1CdE1v-0005qr-TE; Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:39:52 -0500 Original-To: Eli Zaretskii In-Reply-To: <01c4dfae$Blat.v2.2.2$263aae60@zahav.net.il> (Eli Zaretskii's message of "Sat, 11 Dec 2004 20:19:50 +0200") User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/21.3.50 (gnu/linux) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:31010 gmane.emacs.xemacs.beta:17406 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:31010 "Eli Zaretskii" writes: >> Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:27:39 +0000 (GMT) >> From: Alan Mackenzie >> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org, xemacs-beta@xemacs.org >> >> What is the purpose of the GFDL? I quote from the licence: "The >> purpose of this License is to make a manual .... "free" in the >> sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy >> and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either >> commercially or noncommercially." Since the XEmacs team's freedom >> here is ineffective, the GFDL is, on its own terms, broken. > > I think you are taking the ``free'' part too literally. Free > Software or Free Documentation does not necessarily mean that you > are ``free'' to do whatever you want with it. For example, the GPL > says that your freedom is limited by the requirement to supply the > sources together with the binary. > > So an argument that ``free'' means there are no limitations is an > invalid argument, IMHO. A better argument would be whether the > limitations of freedom imposed by the GFDL are justified by the > goals of the Free Software movement. And that, in my opinion, is not just a question about the GFDL itself, but also what it is being applied to. Personally, I consider it a good thing that the GFDL as an option for authors exists: if I were to write a book with non-trivial non-technical value, a book with a topic of its own, I'd consider the GFDL a good choice to have that would be good for preserving parts of my author's interest in the integrity of the work. But while I like its availability where I consider it appropriate, I think that it should not be applied to reference material intended to accompany software distributions: it makes no sense to not be able to copy examples and passages freely between doc strings and manual. Of course, the sole copyright owner of the material (like the FSF is for its key project) _can_ do that, but it means that the project as a whole is no longer governed by the spirit of a public licence: we now have only a _single_ party that is allowed to manage the operations needed to sensibly maintain the project as a whole. Since combined GFDL/GPL projects break the spirit of a public licence in, I consider the GFDL licence the wrong choice for material that is basically maintained by the same set of authors and in the same manner (CVS or whatever) together with GPLed software. This would probably hold for the majority of documentation in Texinfo format, with possibly some arguable exceptions where a whole project is done _completely_ under the GFDL, like some LaTeX references are, even though the lack of ability for freely copying example code from and back to GPLed projects might also apply here. Of course it would be pointless to distribute the Emacs Lisp manual under the GFDL while giving the XEmacs team full licence to use it under the GPL. I agree with that. But I also think that the Emacs Lisp manual is a prime example of a manual that should be available under the GPL outright to begin with, because it evolves together with and inseparable from Emacs, and having it under a different licence means that we use copyright for throwing a permanent monkey wrench for maintenance into any forks of the project not done by the copyright owner itself, defeating the "public" in the "GNU General Public Licence". -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum