[Textbook-l] different open content licenses

Sat Jul 26 00:15:56 UTC 2003

Mav wrote:

>Toby wrote:

>>But anybody can add Invariant Sections.
>>So if GNU FDL with Invariant Sections is not free,
>>then GNU FDL without them is not copyleft.

>Well the Debian people want to consider the GNU FDL non-copyleft - that is
>their right. But they do not own the term. Anyway...

What do the Debian people have to do with this?
I'm using the terms "free" and "copyleft" as the FSF defines them.
Do you disagree with my conclusion above?  Then say why.
Debian has nothing to do with this; the truth is independent of their opinion.
Just as it's independent of the FSF's opinion.

>The Invariant Sections issue is very troublesome to me and we really need to
>work with the GNU people to remove this option from future versions of their
>license (for the sake of free content we must do this because it is not
>possible to change Wikipedia's license). I would furthermore /strongly/ argue
>that we do not accept any GNU FDL text in any Wikimedia project that has
>Invariant Sections. The last thing we need is to become infected with that
>garbage.

If we licence our material under the GNU FDL with no Invariant Sections,
then we /can't/ accept material with Invariant Sections
any more than we can accept material under CC SA, etc.
FDL w/ IS is incompatible with FDL w/o IS.
(And also with my disjunctive licence, for that matter.)

>>The Creative Commons SA licence, in contrast, 
>>has no such problems. It is by any objective measure 
>>the superior licence;

>I tend to agree but in the real world the GNU FDL is the license used by the
>great majority of free content (not just Wikipedia ; CC is a suite of
>licenses, not a single license, but together they are gaining some ground).
>So our strategy should be to go with the flow and try to change that license
>instead of making things really complicated by having a bunch of different
>licenses within one project.

We should only go with the flow if we have reason to.
If your cookbook wants to borrow material from WP, then it has reason to.
But if my math book has no interest in that material except as information,
then it has no reason to.

>I'm sure RMS will listen to our concerns since Wikipedia is by far the largest
>GNU FDL project in the world and I'm sure RMS is also concerned about
>Debian's decision. The whole point of the GNU FDL was to have a license for
>software documentation and yet anybody who wants their documentation in
>Debian won't use this license - hence the license needs to be overhauled.

I suspect that RMS will accept removing the Invariant Sections.
But I can't imagine him changing the GNU FDL to allow
redistribution under a Creative Commons licence;
since CC doesn't share the FSF's ethical philosophy
(they even offer the non-free ND and NC licence options!),
how can he be sure that CC licences will remain free?

Now, if you can get a statement from RMS saying that
he trusts CC and wants to change the FDL to allow compatibility
(presumably with CC BY-SA or possibly also with CC SA),
then I wouldn't worry about anything anymore!

>But in the meantime it is already difficult enough to get people to understand
>our one license - let's not add another and make it even more complicated.

Who has trouble understanding it?
I still expect that most users don't care at all.

-- Toby