[freeroleplay] Re: Licensing
- From: Ricardo Gladwell <president@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: FRPGC <freeroleplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 21:48:57 +0000
On Wed, 2003-11-26 at 21:31, Samuel Penn wrote:
> On Wednesday 26 November 2003 13:43, Ricardo Gladwell wrote:
> > In the interests of furthering the discussion I would be interested to
> > understand you reasons for preferring to remain with the FDL given the
> > issues raised here and elsewhere.
>
> Because of the transparent format clause. I'm single minded, aren't I? :-)
I appreciate your single mindedness here. I agree, the transparent copy
clause is as desirable as it is unique amongst free content licenses. I
just hope you can see things from my perspective. I'm stuck between a
rock and a hard place: my dislike of the Invariant Sections and my love
of the Transparency Clause.
I've spent a lot of time mulling this over and the only possible
alternatives are that we compromise the FRPGC ethical stance or license
FRPGC content under the GPL.
The latter does mean losing the finer qualities of the Transparency
Clause. However, the GPL does require that the "source code" or
"preferred form of modification" be provided. Given that most
proprietary document formats have been reverse engineered and filters
added to most open-source word processors, being locked into a
proprietary format is not so much of a problem. Also, given the laziness
of downstream users, its unlikely people would modify the format the
document was originally published in.
I assume your desire for the Transparency Clause has something to do
with your excellent Yagsbooks application, which is understandable.
> If the next version of the GPL had a clause that 'source code' had
> to be made available in a transparent format, or possibly even that
> GPL'd documentation had to be in a transparent format, would that
> fix things, and allow everyone to happily use the GPL for all
> documentation? It would seem easier than having two different
> licenses.
I agree, this would be ideal. I really don't understand why the FSF took
this course of action, creating Invariant Sections and making the FDL
incompatible with the GPL. However, given the FSF's stance on the FDL I
feel this is unlikely to happen. I'm especially dubious about them
listening to the FRPGC at all.
I suggest we put together a letter to the FSF, perhaps working on it
collaboratively in the wiki, politely requesting that:
a) they consider making Invariant Sections optional or otherwise moving
them into a separate Lesser Free Documentation License, or otherwise
find some compromise;
b) they seek to make future versions of the FDL GPL-compatible; and
c) failing the above, they modify up their definition of "source code"
for future versions of the GPL to include transparency-like copies.
Shall I get the ball rolling on this?
--
Ricardo Gladwell
President, Free Roleplaying Community
http://www.freeroleplay.org/
president@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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