Re: [Bug-tar] GFDL unmodifiable sections in info

[Bdale Garbee]

On Sun, 2006-03-19 at 12:40 -0800, Paul Eggert wrote:
> "Sergey Poznyakoff" <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> >> The document contains the section by inclusion (see the "@include
> >> fdl.texi").
> >
> > No, it does not. The title of the included section is 'GNU Free
> > Documentation License', whereas the copyright part refers to
> > 'Invariant Sections being "GNU General Public License"'.
> 
> Ah, OK, I misread the permissions notice.  You are right, and your
> change is the right one.  Sorry about the noise.

Actually, I have been advised that we aren't quite done yet.  The text
of the Debian GR regarding the GFDL concluded that:

       This means that works that don't include any Invariant Sections,
       Cover Texts, Acknowledgements, and Dedications (or that do, but
       permission to remove them is explicitly granted), are suitable for
       the main component of our distribution.

Sergey's patch fixed the (bogus) invariant section reference, but the 
assertion regarding cover texts remains in tar.texi, thus the release-
critical bug for Debian about this has been re-opened.

I'm sorry if this seems pedantic, but these characteristics of the GFDL 
have been a source of great frustration and inconsistency in Debian, and
in the wake of the GR process we are trying to be 100% consistent about
what is allowed in Debian "main" using the GFDL.  Would it be possible to
either remove the assertions about the cover texts (which seems like an 
inconsequential change to me in this case), or alternatively can 
permission to remove them be added?  In either case, a patch that I can 
apply to the sources in my current packaging would be appreciated pending
the next release of tar.

Thanks in advance for your help resolving this.

Bdale