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Debian GNU/Linux to Declare GNU GFDL non-Free?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the read-those-licenses dept.

Syntaxis writes "There's some considerable argy-bargy in progress over whether or not GNU's own GFDL is a Free documentation license at all. At issue are "invariant sections" which cannot be removed from derivative works. Check out the thread culminating in the proposed motion to take action. The current consensus on Debian-legal does indeed appear to be that one of the FSF's own licenses is non-Free under the terms of the Debian Free Software Guidelines! Well, documentation for GPLed projects countermanding the very freedoms embodied in the GPL certainly seems insane to me."

3 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Debian has some weird licencing rules. by Mendax+Veritas · · Score: 5, Informative

    You obviously don't understand what the Debian project is all about. It isn't just a Linux distro; it is specifically a free software distro. They don't want anything that isn't free-as-in-liberty. That's why they have the licensing rules that they do.

  2. Re:If you want true open source on anything by BJH · · Score: 5, Informative

    In case you didn't realise, any works completely of your creation can be used in any way you like, as you're the sole copyright holder.

    So the only case where you wouldn't be able to take a work you've released under GPL and include it in a closed source application is where you've either (a) originally taken source that was under GPL or similar and added to it or (b) applied patches from people where those patches were supplied in the understanding that the resulting app would be released under GPL or similar license.

    In other words, your comment about releasing your own works into the public domain because it gives you more freedom are wrong.

  3. Re:Same with GPL by Mendax+Veritas · · Score: 5, Informative

    Either you're trolling, or you don't understand the issue. Of course you can't change the license; that would make no sense. The issue has to do with the fact that the GFDL allows portions of the licensed document to be marked "invariant", meaning you can't change those parts. This is logically equivalent to what you would have if the GPL allowed authors to mark parts of their source code as unmodifiable. It essentially means that the document is not entirely free, but only mostly free. The debate within Debian has been about whether "mostly free" is good enough.