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On Sunday 12 March 2006 3:48 pm, Benjamin A'Lee wrote: > On Sun, 2006-03-12 at 12:14 +0000, Neil Williams wrote: > > Each section only contains my personal opinion of the topic at hand > > and I've used the invariant section because allowing others to change > > those sections would be to misrepresent my opinion - that isn't a case > > of restricting freedom, it's about protecting the individual. It's no > > good allowing someone to change the section on patents to negate the > > arguments against software patents. > > Doesn't the GPL already say I have to make my changes obvious? This is the GNU Free Documentation Licence, not the GNU Public Licence. There is no such requirement in the GFDL. So you've skipped a stage. A document licenced under the GFDL can be modified without a ChangeLog. If that change is to make it part of a GPL program, then subsequent changes are logged but not the original one(s). > I couldn't take a GPLed document that contained a section on software > patents, and change it to negate the arguments, without stating that I'd > changed it. If I didn't record my changes I'd be violating the licence, > and possibly the law (misrepresentation?). The GPL isn't really intended for documentation. The problem is that under the GFDL, you CAN make such changes - hence the need for invariant sections. The GPL also does not require (if anything it dissuades you) that you change the name of the program/document. This means that a GPL document can have these sections removed, with no indication of what was there before other than that it has changed, *and* take the name of that document in a hijacking operation. The section of the GPL you describe does not mean that the entire previous content must be preserved in the ChangeLog, just that a ChangeLog entry is made - it could be v.v.brief. > I'm not actually against the GFDL, personally, I just see no need for > it. If you really don't want anybody to change a text, why not put it > in a separate document under a non-free licence? Because documentation is wider than just a program and often contains subsections that are quite different in the intended effect. Many documents contain acknowledgements and "About..." sections that are nothing to do with the actual documentation inside. They commonly describe the opinions of the author(s) and the reasons why the document was created. These should not be separated from the original - putting these under a separate licence would virtually guarantee that these sections would vanish from future copies. Many documents need a licence that can cope with sections that should not be changed (including removal from the document entirely) AND allow copying and modification of the other sections. How would you licence codehelp.co.uk in such a way that you can update it to HTML4.2 or XSL 2 etc., yet ensure that the current Invariant sections are retained unchanged in all copies? It is not acceptable to just put the whole thing under the GPL because then anyone can remove the entire patent section. It is also unacceptable to put the main content under the GPL and the invariant sections under a EULA because the GPL does not require that such content must be retained with the GPL content. The FSF designed the GPL so that you cannot say that GPL content must be accompanied by non-GPL content. The only notice required by the GPL is "__DATE__ __NAME__ __EMAIL__ removed unwanted / out-of-date section." The ChangeLog does not preserve the original content, it does not even have to describe the previous content. Under the GPL, because it is primarily a PROGRAMME licence, the previous content is presumed to be broken / invalid / bug-ridden. The GPL has to be impersonal, the GFDL tries to allow some personal content to accompany free content, that's why it is useful. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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