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The LDP and Debian
Guylhem writes: "The former LDP license was the first license used for our documentation. While we are now recommending the GNU FDL and the OPL 1 without options A or B, many documents are still licensed under the LDPL. David Merril, our Collection Coordinator, noticed that the LDPL is "not free" according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
We have to get in touch with the authors as soon as possible or 2/3 of the LDP document collection will be removed from the base Debian distribution because the code freeze is happening in 2 days. Maybe some of the LDP unreachable authors are reading slashdot and could take 1 minute to submit an updated document licensed under the FDL or OPL v1 -A -B ? Another solution is to find volunteers to rewrite from scratch the concerned documents."
Would they really use a code freeze as an excuse for putting out a release with the majority of it's documentation removed?
Surely not. I would think the intelligent thing to do would be to set a seperate freeze date for the documentation.
They aren't a company. They believe in Free Software specific to certain licenses, it's an ideal more than a product. They'd be hypocritical if they didn't do this.
I find it interesting that this would be modded up.
;)
"This self-important bullshit ought to stop"
You are making an assumption about the purpose of Debian. You assume that it's about providing you with a new release. It is not. Debian as a project is about producing a free software operating system. If 1/2 of that definition is not met by 2/3 of the documentation, then it should be of major concern (to at least 1/3 of the team
It's not a big deal, get back to hacking code
And what code do you hack? I'm getting rather tired of self-important Slashdot posters who feel that these slackers should go back in the kitchen and bake some pie. We, the coders of various open source and/or free software applications write the code for our own reasons. If you don't like the code or don't feel that it's up to your standards/schedules, then don't use it. We'll be just as happy either way.
I would have a lot more sympathy for your comments if you spent any time acknowledging that these folks have provided you with an awful lot of benefit because they're fanatics who will waste hours/days/years of their lives for the good of the free software cause.
sPh
Somehow I doubt RMS sees the irony. I wrote a short piece about this back on March 31, 1999: Why "GNU/Linux" is a Misnomer In the 2.5 years since then, the FSF still has not released a GNU distribution, relying instead on the Debian project to do what they won't.
Given that "The GNU Project" doesn't credit the X Window System anywhere in its name, RMS has no moral high ground to stand on when he demands that all Linux-based systems be referred to as "GNU/Linux" systems.
It's doubly ironic that the older BSD license was incompatible with the GPL specifically because of the so-called "advertising clause" that requires credit be given for the BSD-licensed software.
Isn't it funny how RMS feels it isn't necessary to credit BSD or X Windows, yet demands such credit for the GNU project? It's disingenuous hypocrisy, through and through. If someone makes a free software distribution, they should be able to call it anything they want, whether "GNU", "Linux", "BSD" or anything else is included in the name.
After all, wasn't this all supposed to be about freedom? I guess that doesn't include the freedom to choose the name...
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
Yes, I hate licensing too. In fact, that's one of the reasons that I like Debian GNU/Linux. Those folks are fanatic about licensing issues so that I don't have to be. This LDP thing is actually a good example of this. There is no way that any of the LDP authors are going to come after Debian. Especially since Debian itself isn't breaking the rules set forth in the LDP. They are moving the documentation into non-free because they want to alert potential documentation developers that you can't change these documents and distribute the changes without changing the name of the document. That's a pretty tiny nit to pick, but to them it's important.
Which means that if I limit myself to the main part of the Debian distribution I can rest assured that I can happily change the source code to anything I see and still distribute those changes (I might be required to distribute source as well, but that's another story).
IMO, the LDP license is much better than the one Debian wants to use. There is a good reason why changes to the documentation should make it back to the original authors, so they can update their documents. Documentation isn't software. When someone makes a change to software somewhere, and has to update the documentation, the corrosponding changes should be made at the LDP. I shouldn't have to worry if the "Apache Howto" at the LDP website is no longer valid, because somebody at RedHat modified the wording of a "DocumentRoot" to "DocumentStart". According to the LDP license, if someone makes a change like this and documents it (in the RH docs), the change should be forwarded onto the LDP, so they can update/add to theirs, so everyone knows whats going on. This is not the case with the proposed Debian license. People can make changes willy-nlly, and the LDP docs get all out of sync. i think this is ridiculous, and I encourage all LDP authors to not change anything. If the Debian fanatics insist on it, let them write their own docs.
Oh joy, another SlashDot poster who didn't bother to read the article. Why am I not surprised?
This change (moving non-free LDP documents to the non-free tree of Debian) is happening at *my* request, not Debian's. Regardless of your feelings on Debian's guidelines, I don't see how you can fault them for following their own guidelines.
There is no question whatsoever that the LDP documents in question violate the Debian Free Software Guidelines. And the DFSG apply to the *entire* distribution, not just software, despite the title.
David Merrill
LDP Collection Coordinator
The FDL ain't free either. It's quite ironic that Debian wants to convert LDP docs to FDL docs because the former doesn't meet the Debian definition of Free. Well the latter doesn't either. If it wasn't for the fact that the FDL came from GNU, Debian would reject it in a heartbeat.
According the the FSF's four freedoms, the OSI Open Source Definition, and the Debian guidelines, any license that allows immutable sections in the body of a work cannot be Free. Geez.
Of course, documentation should not follow the same rules as software. The root problem is that Debian needs separate guidelines for docs than they do for software. Both LDP and FDL (as well as "copy this at your leisure" licenses) should be allowed.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
No modification is allowed at all. According to the Debian Free Software Guidelines (which they are now applying to ALL included works, not just software), they require that modifications are allowed.
If they drop the text of the license, then they'd have to drop every package licensed under the GPL (as the license requires including a copy of the license).