[gl-como] Stallman licenzia il principale sviluppatore di Hurd...

[Pietro Bertera]

angelo wrote:

 >>http://www.programmazione.it/index.php?entity=enews&idNews=8365&idArea=1

 > Non vorrei fomentare polemiche, ma Stallman non esagera 
un po'?

Stallman (come da sempre) adotta delle politiche piuttosto
estremiste a cui timane coerente.
Poi si puo discutere sulla bonta' dell' estremismo.

L'articolo è inoltre impreciso e com qualche errore:

"Inoltre, ci sono delle parti considerevoli nei manuali GDFL
che non possono essere rimosse o cambiate e questo crea
problemi a chi vuole utilizzare la documentazione."

Bhe le parti non modificabili sono la nota di licenza della
doc, che non è "parte considerevole", è la stessa politica
della GPL.

Questo è il messaggio originale:

------- Start of forwarded message -------
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 11:33:16 -0800
From: tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)
Subject: What's up with the GFDL?
To: gnu-prog-discuss@gnu.org
X-Spam-Level:


Richard Stallman is pushing an anti-free license for
documentation.
By that, I mean, a license for documentation which, if it
were used
for software, would unquestionably be understood as unfree.

There are many negative consequences of this action:

1) The Debian Project, which is committed to free software,
cannot
     distribute GFDL'd manuals as part of the Debian system.
   This is
     ironic in the extreme, because RMS used to complain that
Debian was
     too loose about distributing non-free things.  Now
Debian is too
     tight for him.

2) It is not possible to borrow text from a GFDL'd manual and
     incorporate it in any free software program whatsoever.
   This is
     not a mere license incompatibility.  It's not just that
the GFDL is
     incompatible with this or that free software license:
it's that it
     is fundamentally incompatible with *any* free software
license
     whatsoever.  So if you write a new program, and you have no
     commitments at all about what license you want to use,
saving only
     that it be a free license, you cannot include GFDL'd text.

3) The FSF solicited public comment on the GFDL, but this
seems to
     have been a deceptive enterprise.  The goal seems to
have been to
     garner public support for it, and that simply failed.
So the FSF
     does not trumpet that little public comment, and has
issued no
     explanation of why such a widely unpopular documentation
license
     should be used.

4) RMS has now "dismissed" me as Hurd maintainer because I have
     publicly spoken against the GFDL, saying that a GNU
maintainer must
     support and speak in favor of GNU policies.  If this is
really
     RMS's reason, then it means that he demands the right to
control
     the speech of every GNU volunteer when it comes to GNU
project
     policies.  He wants not merely to set the direction, but
also to
     require that each and every one of us publicly support a
GNU policy
     when asked to.

I do not know what the right response is.  I believe perhaps
the best
thing to do is to create structures for GNU project
volunteers to
express their opinions so that we can even find out what the GNU
project thinks.  Heretofore, RMS has been an able spokesman,
but when
he disregards the comments of volunteers (even when explicitly
solicited), works against free software, and attempts to
control the
speech of GNU volunteers in talking about such issues,
something has
gone very wrong.

I suspect that nothing will happen, and the sad result will
be that
while free software will continue to thrive, the GNU project
will
die.  I do not know what would prevent that.

Thomas

Technical Addendum
- ------------------

The incompatibilities of the GFDL with free software are not
controversial.  There are two central problems.

First, GFDL'd manuals can contain "invariant sections" which
cannot be
changed or removed.  This is a restriction on modification
which isn't
permitted for free software licenses.  Moreover, it is not a
trivial
restriction or one that imposes minimal costs.  Invariant
sections can
be very large, and the pieces of a GFDL'd manual that one
wants to
copy might be small.  (For example, a description of how to
use a
single function, if copied from the Emacs manual, requires the
inclusion of many kilobytes of extraneous text from invariant
sections.)  Such restrictions are not allowed in free software
licenses.

Second, there are restrictions on what formats a GFDL'd
manual can be
distributed in, which work to prohibit encryption and the
like.  No
such restriction exists for free software licenses.
------- End of forwarded message -------