pkg kde talk - Jan 2006 - Debian, KDE and the GFDL problem

Hello list, 

As many might be aware, the Debian project has been concerned about the
non-freeness of the GNU Free Documentation Licence for a few years
already, and although conversations with the Free Software Foundation
have been ongoing for at least four years, we don''t know if our
legal advise to the FSF will end up in a new GFDL version being
published that addresses the problems in time for the new Debian
release (Etch, which will be released in December 2006).

Due to some changes[0] to the wording of the Social Contract[1] made by
the Debian project, it was decided that the principles of freeness
described by the DFSG would need to apply to all works included in the
Debian archive, not only software. This, of course, includes
documentation licensed under the GFDL.

This week, Debian Developer Anthony Towns sent an email proposing Debian
to release a statement[2] that would make the Project''s position with
respect to the GFDL official and mandatory. This is expected to be voted
upon in two weeks, and it''s highly probable it will pass with a broad
majority.

For detailed information on why Debian thinks the GFDL is not
acceptable, see Manoj Srivastava''s "Position Statement"
document[3] on the
subject.

Now, sorry for this long introduction, but I didn''t expect kde-devel
readers to know what''s going on in the debian-vote battlefield. :)

When this vote concludes, Debian maintainers will be forced to get rid
of non-free documentation, including GFDL docs, from the .debs and
.tar.gz''s. Today, the team of developers in charge of packaging KDE in
Debian (known as Debian Qt KDE team), started to realise that if we
don''t
start doing something about it now, we might be delaying the etch
release, given the amount of work that removing the works covered by the
FDL in KDE modules is.

We basically have two practical options, because we better not wait for
the FSF to make the required changes to the GFDL:

1) Edit KDE tarballs for every version of every module including a
   GFDL''ed manual and repackage them without them.

   This would be a great amount of work, and would leave Debian without a
   single user manual for our users to read up in Yelp. I guess we could
   get rid of khelpcenter too. :)

2) Convince manual authors to a) relicense their works under the GPL, or
   b) double-license them under both the GFDL and GPL.

I personally vouch for 2b) as it gives more choice to people, and
doesn''t
change the current licensing situation too radically. Also, for reasons
explained in the previously mentioned documents, having different
licences for a program and its documentation is a bad idea, and dual
licensing takes care of that too.

The members of the Debian Qt KDE team are interested in what the KDE
project thinks about this problem. If you think relicensing the manuals
is a good idea, we''d have to ask for relicensed works in the future and
start
a hunt of every copyright holder to get permission to relicense the manuals.
Of course, we would help as much as possible to make this happen.

This problem is not KDE specific. A long list of GNU packages and GNOME
modules are on the same boat, according to members of the Debian GNOME
team, who have approached the GNOME project with this same concern,
in an attempt to fix the problem on their end. (in fact this mail is a 
filtered version of the one sent to the GNOME list [4].

Thanks,
Isaac

[0] http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003
[1] http://www.debian.org/social_contract
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/12/msg00115.html
[3] http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml
[4] 
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2006-January/msg00033.html

-- 
Isaac Clerencia

Hi Lauri :)

On Saturday, 7 January 2006 13:39, Lauri Watts wrote:
> The FDL, with the above terms, is the only license currently in use in KDE,
> although there are some legacy documents licensed under the GPL.
>
> Before this goes any further, can you please show me where (and why) debian
> believes the GFDL *with no invariant sections and no front/back cover
> texts* is a non-free license?
http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml

Quoting from there:
"The problems with the GFDL fall into three major categories, which are 
treated in detail below."

The DRM Restriction
-------------------
Section 2 (VERBATIM COPYING) of the GFDL goes beyond the traditional source 
requirement in copyleft licenses in an important way: according to the GFDL 
no copy may ever be subject to "technical measures to obstruct or
control"
reading and copying. This means that: 
 * It is not limited to the act of distribution (i.e., it applies to private 
copies as well). 
 * It rules out the possibility that a version be distributed on some form of 
DRM media (for technical reasons, perhaps), even while providing source 
(i.e., a transparent copy) in an unencumbered way at the same time. 
 * As written, it would outlaw actions like changing the permission of a copy 
of the document on your machine, storing it on an encrypted file system, 
distributing a copy over an encrypted link (Obstruct or control the reading 
is not clarified to apply merely to the recipient), or even storing it on a 
file-sharing system with non-world-readable permissions. 

 Consider that the GFDL currently prohibits distribution on DRM media, as 
compared to the GPL which requires distribution on non-DRM media. This is a 
serious additional restriction.

Transparent And Opaque Copies
-----------------------------
 Section 3 (Copying in Quantity) of the GFDL states that it is not enough to 
just put a transparent copy of a document alongside with the opaque version 
when you are distributing it (which is all that you need to do for sources 
under the GPL, for example). Instead, the GFDL insists that you must somehow 
include a machine-readable Transparent copy (i.e., not allow the opaque form 
to be downloaded without the transparent form) or keep the transparent form 
available for download at a publicly accessible location for one year after 
the last distribution of the opaque form. 
 It is our belief that as long as you make the source and binaries available 
so that the users can see what''s available and take what they want, you
have
done what is required of you. It is up to the user whether to download the 
transparent form. This is a paraphrase from the GPL FAQ 
 The requirements for redistributors should be to make sure the users can get 
the transparent form, not to force users to download the transparent form 
even if they don''t want it.
> For the record, relicensing most of our documentation will be impossible.
> There are several people with stated objections to using the GPL for
> documentation, many people we have no way of contacting, and a couple who
> are no longer alive, which makes them fairly difficult to contact.
Yeah, I feared that :(

Best regards

-- 
Isaac Clerencia at Warp Networks, http://www.warp.es
Work: <isaac@warp.es>   | Debian: <isaac@debian.org>
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On Thursday 05 January 2006 19:47 pm, Isaac Clerencia
wrote:
> 2) Convince manual authors to a) relicense their works under the GPL, or
>    b) double-license them under both the GFDL and GPL.
You may not relicense or double-license any of the documentation I have 
contributed to.

There are no invariant sections in my stuff, and I think that makes it a free 
license. You are welcome to disagree. You are more than welcome not to 
provide my documentation (or put it into non-free, whatever).

I haven''t written much documentation, so this may not affect your
broader
approach. 

Brad
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On Saturday 07 January 2006 11:31, Brad Hards wrote:
> On Thursday 05 January 2006 19:47 pm, Isaac Clerencia wrote:
> > 2) Convince manual authors to a) relicense their works under the GPL,
or
> >    b) double-license them under both the GFDL and GPL.
>
> You may not relicense or double-license any of the documentation I have
> contributed to.
>
> There are no invariant sections in my stuff, and I think that makes it a
> free license. You are welcome to disagree. You are more than welcome not to
> provide my documentation (or put it into non-free, whatever).
There are no invariant sections in *any* KDE documentation.   There are no 
Front-Cover texts, and there are no Back-Cover texts. *ALL* our documentation 
that uses the FDL is licensed under the following terms:

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under 
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later 
version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant 
Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of 
the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation 
License".

(as you can see here, as an example, the first doc I come across)
http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdebase/kxkb/ln-id2481641.html

If you can find a specific example where this is not the case, please let me 
know, and I will sort it out.

The FDL, with the above terms, is the only license currently in use in KDE, 
although there are some legacy documents licensed under the GPL. 

Before this goes any further, can you please show me where (and why) debian 
believes the GFDL *with no invariant sections and no front/back cover texts* 
is a non-free license?

For the record, relicensing most of our documentation will be impossible.  
There are several people with stated objections to using the GPL for 
documentation, many people we have no way of contacting, and a couple who are 
no longer alive, which makes them fairly difficult to contact.

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts
KDE Documentation: http://docs.kde.org
KDE on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.kde.org

On Saturday 07 January 2006 13:39, Lauri Watts wrote:
> On Saturday 07 January 2006 11:31, Brad Hards wrote:
> > On Thursday 05 January 2006 19:47 pm, Isaac Clerencia wrote:
> > > 2) Convince manual authors to a) relicense their works under the
GPL,
> > > or b) double-license them under both the GFDL and GPL.
I have some questions:
1: Would Debian accept something like the BSD documentation license (with or 
without the copyright notice requirements) as an alternative dual license to 
the GPL?
(See: 
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/LEGALNOTICE.html )
2: Would Debian accept an exception clause along the lines of the Qt license 
exception clause, excising the objectionable parts of the FDL?
3: Specifically are there any other licenses I didn''t mention (and
which
versions of those licenses) that are acceptable to Debian as either
  3a: The sole license on a document, or
  3b: A dual license along with FDL as we use it today.

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts
KDE Documentation: http://docs.kde.org
KDE on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.kde.org

On Sunday, 8 January 2006 02:28, Lauri Watts wrote:
> On Saturday 07 January 2006 13:39, Lauri Watts wrote:
> > On Saturday 07 January 2006 11:31, Brad Hards wrote:
> > > On Thursday 05 January 2006 19:47 pm, Isaac Clerencia wrote:
> > > > 2) Convince manual authors to a) relicense their works under
the GPL,
> > > > or b) double-license them under both the GFDL and GPL.
>
> I have some questions:
> 1: Would Debian accept something like the BSD documentation license (with
> or without the copyright notice requirements) as an alternative dual
> license to the GPL?
Yes, that license is acceptable by Debian.
> 2: Would Debian accept an exception clause along the lines of the Qt
> license exception clause, excising the objectionable parts of the FDL?
Well, I guess it would be enough, although I''m not sure about it. I
will ask
debian-legal@lists.debian.org about it.
> 3: Specifically are there any other licenses I didn''t mention (and
which
> versions of those licenses) that are acceptable to Debian as either
>   3a: The sole license on a document, or
>   3b: A dual license along with FDL as we use it today.
After having a look at debian-legal@lists.debian.org archives it looks like 
there are three documentation licenses considered "free" by Debian
just now:
a) The FreeBSD documentation license that you asked about in 1)
b) The Linux Documentation Project License v 2.0: 
http://www.tldp.org/COPYRIGHT.html
c) Sun''s documentation license (used by OpenOffice.org):
http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/pdl.pdf

Best regards and thank you :)

-- 
Isaac Clerencia at Warp Networks, http://www.warp.es
Work: <isaac@warp.es>   | Debian: <isaac@debian.org>
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