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. 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 desktop-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 GNOME in Debian (known as Debian GNOME 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 GNOME 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 GNOME tarballs for every version of every module including a gnome-doc 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 Yelp too. :) 2) Convince manual authors to a) relicence 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 GNOME team are interested in what the GNOME project thinks about this problem. If you think relicensing the manuals is a good idea, we''d have to start a hunt of every copyright holder to get permission to relicence the manuals. We need to get started sooner than later, if we want to be ready by 2.16 (which is our optimistic target for GNOME version to distribute with Debian etch). This problem is not GNOME specific. A long list of GNU packages and KDE modules are on the same boat, according to members of the Debian KDE team, who are going to approach the KDE project with this same concern, in an attempt to fix the problem on their end. Thanks, Jordi (for the GNOME team) [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 -- Jordi Mallach P?rez -- Debian developer http://www.debian.org/ jordi@sindominio.net jordi@debian.org http://www.sindominio.net/ GnuPG public key information available at http://oskuro.net/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: Digital signature Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-kde-talk/attachments/20060104/a2834ca9/attachment.pgp
Federico Mena Quintero
2006-Jan-05 04:09 UTC
[pkg-kde-talk] Re: Debian and the GFDL problem
On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 19:41 +0100, Jordi Mallach wrote:> 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.It is up to Debian to follow up with the FSF on creating a new version of the GFDL which addresses Debian''s concerns. It is also up to Debian to contact and negotiate with every individual author of documentation which happens to have a problematic license. Federico
On 1/4/06, Jordi Mallach <jordi@debian.org> wrote:> The members of the Debian GNOME team are interested in what the GNOME > project thinks about this problem. If you think relicensing the manuals > is a good idea, we''d have to start a hunt of every copyright holder to > get permission to relicence the manuals. We need to get started sooner > than later, if we want to be ready by 2.16 (which is our optimistic > target for GNOME version to distribute with Debian etch).I personally think it''s a good idea as I agree that the GFDL sucks, but I have virtually 0 influence in this area. The person you''d need to talk to is Shaun; as GDPFL and the one working hardest on this currently he naturally has the most say. He''d also be the one who''d have the best idea of who to contact and how much work you''ll be in for. I''m guessing that if you could get him and Sun to agree to dual license then you''d have the majority of the documentation covered but that''s just a random guess on my part; he''d be able to tell you better. Cheers, Elijah
Le mercredi 04 janvier 2006 ? 22:01 -0600, Federico Mena Quintero a ?crit :> It is up to Debian to follow up with the FSF on creating a new version > of the GFDL which addresses Debian''s concerns.Indeed, and it now seems it won''t happen, as the FSF hasn''t moved despite long-standing discussion efforts from Debian developers. Furthermore, most people on debian-legal don''t believe it is necessary to create just another license. The best license for a program''s documentation is the same license as the program itself. It allows to copy-paste things back and forth from examples to code, and to integrate the program with the documentation without being concerned with legal issues.> It is also up to Debian to contact and negotiate with every individual > author of documentation which happens to have a problematic license.Of course, but having first the agreement of the core GNOME developers will make this work much easier to integrate. Regards, -- .''''`. Josselin Mouette /\./\ : :'' : josselin.mouette@ens-lyon.org `. `'' joss@debian.org `- Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom
Le jeudi 05 janvier 2006 ? 07:55 +0100, Josselin Mouette a ?crit :> Le mercredi 04 janvier 2006 ? 22:01 -0600, Federico Mena Quintero a > ?crit : > > It is also up to Debian to contact and negotiate with every individual > > author of documentation which happens to have a problematic license. > > Of course, but having first the agreement of the core GNOME developers > will make this work much easier to integrate.Well, you really just need the agreement of the people who wrote (and are still writing) the docs :-) I''m biased since I''m okay with the change, but I don''t see why the "core GNOME developers" would oppose such a change. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas press?s.
On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 08:46:48AM +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:> > Of course, but having first the agreement of the core GNOME developers > > will make this work much easier to integrate. > Well, you really just need the agreement of the people who wrote (and > are still writing) the docs :-)Well, the people who are still writing the docs might not continue doing so next year. Also, all the documentation, skeletons and examples on how to create GNOME manuals just use fdl.xml as their "licensing". What Joss and I are looking after is that GNOME adopts fdl+gpl licensing as the "standard" licence scheme for docs. Dealing with already written docs we need to do already, but we want to improve future works from the foundation.> I''m biased since I''m okay with the change, but I don''t see why the "core > GNOME developers" would oppose such a change.Good. :) Jordi -- Jordi Mallach P?rez -- Debian developer http://www.debian.org/ jordi@sindominio.net jordi@debian.org http://www.sindominio.net/ GnuPG public key information available at http://oskuro.net/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: Digital signature Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-kde-talk/attachments/20060105/bfc5d77c/attachment.pgp
On Thu, January 5, 2006 11:08, Jordi Mallach wrote:> On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 08:46:48AM +0100, Vincent Untz wrote: >> > Of course, but having first the agreement of the core GNOME developers >> > will make this work much easier to integrate. >> Well, you really just need the agreement of the people who wrote (and >> are still writing) the docs :-) > > Well, the people who are still writing the docs might not continue doing > so next year. Also, all the documentation, skeletons and examples on how > to create GNOME manuals just use fdl.xml as their "licensing".My point is: this stuff (documentation, skeletons and examples) is maintained by the documentation team :-) So it''s really up to them. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas press?s.