Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Licenses clarification

[Sylvain Beucler]

Hi,

Afaics dual-licensing is a way to avoid the kind of problems you
mentioned (for your specific examples I think there are others). Note
that it's not about accepting the GFDL as a license, since we already
do so.

Thanks for your feedback,

-- 
Sylvain

On Sun, Feb 12, 2006 at 02:15:28AM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > It is not clear what licenses we accept for documentation. In
> > the same spirit - be able to easily share and build manuals
> > under the GNU license - we plan to ask new projects to release
> > documentation under a license compatible with the GNU Free
> > Documentation License.
> 
> Many free software authors consider the adware potential of the
> GNU FDL to be an unacceptable price to pay "to enlist commercial
> publishers in funding free documentation"[1] and consider the
> freedom to remove or reduce inappropriate or unethical advertising
> a vital liberty. To give two topical examples:
> - the unethical environmental harm of wasting paper printing
> a large invariant section when deriving a quick reference card
> from a manual;
> - the potential for imprisonment, hate crimes and other problems
> if an author has solicited an illegal act or advertised a widely-
> hated political or terror group in their invariant sections.
> 
> For these sorts of reasons and others, dual-licensing is not
> a welcome suggestion. That would still allow others to attach
> things permanently and force *all* downstream distributors of
> manual derivatives to damage the world more. It may be possible
> to use moral rights to object to such derogatory treatment
> of our work, but it looks like it could be argued (from [2])
> that we don't have that right for some works that use the FDL.
> 
> Practically, the FDL is also incompatible with the GPL. Please
> continue to allow projects under only GPL-compatible licences
> and require that projects place manuals under a GPL-compatible
> licence as well as any other licence used.
> 
> References:
> 
> [1] - Why publishers should use the GNU FDL
> by Richard Stallman
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-gfdl.html
> 
> [2] - Section 81: Exceptions to right.
> Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
> http://www.jenkins-ip.com/patlaw/cdpa1.htm#s81