On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
The license is silent on the matter, therefore, under
general
principles of freedom (in the sense of speech, not beer), which is the
foundational principle of GNU, then anonymous authorship is just fine.
I can ask RMS if you really want me too, but I think it's highly
HIGHLY unlikely that he would say "Oh, no, I didn't intend for people
to write things anonyous under the FDL. The talk about authorship is
supposed to imply that people are required to give their full name,
address, and social security number before they can use the license!"
My message was about pseudonyms, so full names, addresses, and social
security numbers don't come into it.
Anyway, now that you've started referring to "the Founding Fathers of this
country", I see that this may be as much a matter of culture as of logic.
If the interpretation of the GFDL requires a grounding in American
history, then I give up. And I expect you're right about Mr. Stallman's
views. I've just had a look round his website.
But I should point out that just because the ideas of freedom of speech,
and privacy and anonymity, are closely linked in American history, it
doesn't mean that they are in truth. Privacy and anonymity are just
personal barriers, and barriers are restrictions on freedom. This is not a
statement about whether I think they are good or bad; I'm just pointing
out that they are opposed to each other. Ah, isn't philosophy fun? :)
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton |
| omp199(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk |
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