Subject: Couple of questions regarding GNU FDL
Newsgroups: gmane.os.miros.general
Date: 2006-01-11 12:44:11 GMT (3 years, 25 weeks, 14 hours and 50 minutes ago)
Dear Mr Stallman, dear Ladies and Gentlemen of the FSF,
I have a couple of questions regarding paragraph 2 (verbatim copying) of
the GNU FDL (any version, but specifically, the current one).
The questions are: does any of the following operations violate the
licence, specifically the anti-DRM clause?
In the following, "IT" shall have the meaning of "a verbatim copy of a
GNU FDL licenced document, such as the GCC manual, optionally together
with patches, such as in the form of an RCS comma-v file". We're always
talking about *source* code only, and the verbatim document is always
accessible (e.g. with the RCS 'co' command, or even a simple 'less').
* redistributing IT as part of e.g. a CVS repository, via anonymous
CVS, anonymous RSYNC, on CDs (commercially or non-commercially)
* redistributing IT via a secure channel (such as CVS over SSH, or
RSYNC over SSH)
* storing IT in a directory on a multi-user machine which is not
globally readable (e.g. 0750 user:group)
* storing IT on an encrypted filesystem (on a multi-user machine)
* any combination of the above
If these minimum criteria are not met, we (a free operating system
project) will have a hard time maintaining GNU code in our system,
because even if we 'cvs delete' the files (which is actually not
our intention) they are still distributed (in the Attic/ directory)
as part of the CVS repository.
This should give enough context for the following, but I'll still
say it: the FDL-licenced documents are not the "main part" of the
collection (repository, whatever) but only a few files among some
70,000.
Can you assure us that neither we nor our voluntary mirrors would
ever get sued for licence violation as a result of one of the ac-
tions listed above?
Thanks in advance!
Sincerely,
//mirabile
PS: If you don't mind, would you please be so kind as to respond to
the mailing list address, so we have the answer archived?
--
I believe no one can invent an algorithm. One just happens to hit upon it
when God enlightens him. Or only God invents algorithms, we merely copy them.
If you don't believe in God, just consider God as Nature if you won't deny
existence. -- Coywolf Qi Hunt