Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] GFDL

[MJ Ray]

David Turner <address@hidden>
> Please report specific usage bugs to the maintainers of those programs.

I will not support use of the FDL until it is repaired.

> The GDB documentation's current notice says:

Yes, it was fixed after it was brought to RMS's attention.
GDB 5.1 had invariant sections such as "A Sample GDB Session",
"Algorithms" and "Porting GDB".  It was just one example of
FDL being too complicated for maintainers.

You can find these examples all over the web, from all sorts
of people: "with Invariant Sections being this entire text
(including images)" http://www.matt.newsome.com/dnatext.html -
a small random sample suggests that more people botch the FDL
than apply it.  It looks like many people want an FSF licence,
but also want to forbid edits!

> [...]  But I will note that so far, I know of no
> cases where anyone has contributed something useful along with a
> pernitious invariant section.  

It depends what you call pernitious. I know there are FDL'd works
where an author has added scripture as an invariant section and
I'm sure it won't be long before extreme politics appear.

[...]
> > The GPLv3 process is rather closed and difficult to access,
> > so I cannot comment at present. I am discussing this with its
> > webmasters, but I am frustrated that you direct me to a process
> > that I cannot access myself.
> 
> Anyone who can send an email can comment.  

Well, the email interface description says that commenters
must already be registered with the web site, are limited
to commenting on sections of the draft text and my bad
experience with it so far suggests that could be true.

Best wishes,
-- 
MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/  irc.oftc.net/slef  Jabber/SIP ask