Re: Permission to use portions of the recent GNU Emacs Manual

Well, but it would not seem that there is much interest from independent publishers, and that was supposed to be the driving factor for choosing the GFDL instead of the GPL, if I understood the argument correctly. Evidentally, I have not been clear. Nothing in this thread that I said should have suggested that interest from independent publishers drives the use of the GFDL with regard to the elisp reference manual. Instead, I have tried to say that the goal is to persuade others to choose the GFDL over a `Creative Commons license with a commercial restriction' or similar license. The GFDL is better. Being a `do as we do' organization is necessary on account of the characters of the people in the organization. They are lousy at doing one thing and saying something at odds with that action. The GFDL ends up both moral and practical. These are the driving factors. (Incidentally, as far as I can see, the timescale for measuring success or failure is another generation or so. My hope is that by that time, societies will have decided that it is a good idea to permit strangers to modify changeable works like technical documentation, to permit strangers to manufacture copies of them that use resources, and at the same time to permit the initiating organizations to recover costs they have expended. My fear is that the strategy will have failed and that societies will have decided to restrict your freedom to protect yourself from those who would hinder development to their benefit.) -- Robert J. Chassell bob(a)rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc