Re: Writing GNUstep book on wikibooks

[Banlu Kemiyatorn]

On 07 Sep 2004 21:59:43 GMT, MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
> Banlu Kemiyatorn <object@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I see nothing wrong with the FDL GNUstep book. Please keep in mind that
> > GNUstep is a project of Free Software Foundation and you _can_ GPL the
> > example code in the GNUstep FDL book.
> 
> Being in support of free software leads to two logical conclusions:
> - why support a licence which obstructs free software?

I don't see it obstruct free software. I think FDL is a more realistic way to
support the free software community. Anyway, it is not my point.
My point is this is a project of FSF and developers should support FSF's
movement (not other project's). Notice that I am against neither GPL nor
FDL documents. If you dislike the FDL, let the economic prove it wrong
(not by yourself, not by Debian's social contract) and FSF will solve
the issue. This means the book needs 'any later version' clause.
I don't think an official reason that "FDL is bad so the official book uses
GPL instead" is an acceptable reason for any GNU projects. If one
want to use that reason, the book should not be the 'official' one.

> - if you are going to GPL the code, you probably want to GPL the
> description of that code so people can include the explanation in
> their source code comments if they wish, so where do you draw the
> line and why not GPL the entire book, because the GPL can be used
> that way without too much trouble?

Not probably. It depends on if one want to be able to make profit from the
book or not. The freely distributable source code is free enough for software
in my opinion and the ease of cut n pasting comments shouldn't be used to
determine the minimum requirement if the project's code is free or not.

]d