Re: problems of the fdl

> From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <[email protected]>
> Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 13:47:05 +0900
> 
> I want it understood that the FDL is _not_ a free software license, it
> is _not_ compatible with many licenses that are free software
> licenses, and its _primary_ motivation for not being a free software
> license is to achieve certain goals by restricting freedom.

FWIW, I agree that the FDL restricts freedom to achieve certain,
primarily political, goals.

I'm not sure the right way to change that is to deprecate the license;
some modification of the FDL might be a better way.  But I'm not going
to spend my time on that, and I don't know enough about the legal
issues involved to make my opinion count.

If you do deprecate the FDL and stop using it, what is the
alternative?  The GPL doesn't seem appropriate, as documentation is
not code, and so ``free software'' is not a good description of a free
manual.  The language of the GPL doesn't fit such uses of it.

Do we even have a good alternative?

There's also a more general issue, already mentioned in this
discussion: any license restricts freedom in some ways.  Both GPL and
GFDL restrict your freedom; the important difference is that GFDL
prevents you from ever modifying specific portions of the original,
while GPL does not.  But they both impose restrictions, and they both
do that for certain political reasons.