Re: libtool documentation license: Debian, the GFDL and the DFSG.

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Thu, Mar 16, 2006 at 04:38:09PM +0100, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> Hi Kurt,
> 
> * Kurt Roeckx wrote on Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 07:06:41PM CET:
> > 
> > As some of you probably know, Debian has concerns about the GNU
> > Free Documentation License (GFDL) being a free license, and that
> > it does not meet the requirements for the Debian Free Software
> > Guidelines (DFSG).  Debian has been talking to the FSF about this
> > since 2001 without any progress.
> 
> This issue is moot (for now) for Libtool documentation, right?
> It has no invariant sections nor cover texts.

As of the last GR, it is acceptable to have GFDL licensed
documentation in Debian (main) that do not have invariant
sections or cover tests.  And the libtool documentation currently
seems to fall under that.  So yes, it's shouldn't be a problem to
keep the documentation in main for now.

I hope that FSF doesn't decide to change all their licenses to
use invariant sections / cover text.  For instance, the current
make manual has 2 licenses, one with cover texts, but the generated
info page from it has the license without the cover texts.  So
the "source" package doesn't meet the DFSG, but the binary
package in Debian does.  That means we'll have to remove the make
manual from the source, and end up with no make documentation.

I hope they don't do that with other software too, I have no idea
about the other GNU software.  But this does mean that every time
we upload a new upstream version, we need to go and check all the
documenation licenses again.  And in the end, it might be
"easier" to just drop the documentation then have to check it
each time.

Note that this is mainly a problem with FSF/GNU software, since
other projects aren't likely be able to change the license in the
first place.

Anyway, I currently plan to keep the documetation in main.


Kurt