On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 11:31:03AM -0400, Emma Jane Hogbin wrote: > On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 01:53:40AM +0100, Colin Watson wrote: > > Sounds like the GFDL. You might want to have a look at debian-legal > > archives on this topic; there are unfortunately various concerns about > > its freeness as far as Debian's definition of the term is concerned. :-/ > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200304/msg00132.html > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200304/msg00243.html > The summary seems to be that it's not a problem as long as there are no > invariant sections. Since I have no intentions of making any part of the > document invariant, I think this is a fine license for my needs.
Unfortunately I'm not sure that the links you quote above represent a general consensus in Debian. In particular, several people have expressed the serious concern that the text in section 2 of the GFDL forbidding the use of "technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute" has the effect of forbidding the installation of GFDLed documents on encrypted filesystems, such as the USB memory stick on which I keep various useful things like my GPG key. I'm aware I'm coming across as a pain here; I'm really just passing it on. Due to issues like the above, as the maintainer of the Debian doc-linux packages I'm likely to come under substantial pressure soon to relegate all LDP documents licensed under the GFDL to non-free, and I'd like to keep the number of affected documents as small as possible. However, I'll stop here and not say anything more unless there are specific questions; I think I've put forward my point as best I can and your licensing decisions are as always yours alone. Cheers, -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
