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

a) what precise purpose does the GFDL achieve for the GNU Emacs manual that is not achieved by it being under the GPL (your explanation is mostly about the contrast to Public Domain and/or BSD)? To be a `do what we do, not a do what we say' organization. b) is the difference this makes worth the trouble it causes? I think so. Certainly, over the past few years lawyers have become very important in the question of software and other freedoms. As the cost of manufacturing information, which is called `copying', comes down, the information's legal status becomes more and more important. A long time ago, I heard someone say that the issue was whether anyone could create a program using an interpreted language like Emacs Lisp, or whether the program would be too slow. That is not the issue now. Many programmers think of the trouble licenses cause to other programmers. That is to be expected, since programmers write code and document it. But the issue here is the interface between certain professionals in one industry and everyone else. Moreover, industry also develops hardware that combined with software have enabled copying to become less and less expensive. This means that when you show how the interface is supposed to work, you need to think about all the people who are not programmers and who do not know anything about computers or code. Nanotechnological assemblers -- rapidly reproducing Von Neumann machines that also copy other things -- would reduce the cost of manufacturing copies to zero. But we are never going to see a reduction to zero in the cost of attention getting, that is to say, of marketing and advertising. That is because getting attention is a zero-sum operation, like getting status. It is not like science-based manufacturing, which is positive sum. This means that an appropriate license will continue to be relevant. c) in particular: is it a good idea to split a free project into two parts with incompatible licences in a manner that makes it only possible for the copyright holder to sensibly maintain the exchange of material across the rift? Do we really want to demonstrate how to do such a thing in large scale? If people on one of the two projects insist on using a license that hurts people, especially the vast majority, who are non-programmers, then their project should suffer. So far, I have not seen any remarks that speak to the points. Among others, I would like to see an argument favoring a `Creative Commons' license that forbids any but gratis distribution, except for its controlling monopolist. Why would that be better for you and me and others? I think it is worse. I would like to see an argument that says that says that FSF need not be consistent; that it should become a `do not do what I do, do what I say' organization. I think the FSF should be consistent. Perhaps I am wrong. I would like to see, but do not expect to see, an argument that says that many programmers who work on GNU projects are really good at selling non-programing business patterns to people are not programmers and who know nothing about computers and software. d) is it a good idea to change a large body of free software (like the GNU Emacs manual) to a different licence when it is well-known that substantial forks exist for which no licence change is possible, ... Why is it not possible? Are you suggesting that the XEmacs people lack proper papers for contributions? If so, this means they cannot ever ensure that the lawyers of a hostile organization with plenty of money will tell the organization's leaders that the software is legal. That is what I think you are suggesting. This means that the XEmacs project is rhetorically ineffective. Since I doubt that many people on it are concerned about business patterns, politics and the like, I do not think this issue is salient to them. I think they are mainly concerned with programming and wish the wider world would go away. In any event, the Lucid people were warned about this years ago and continued on their way. As for FSF: why should a project favoring software freedom, the GNU project, change its licenses to hurt its goal? I think that a good reason to go back on the license would be that FSF need not be consistent. But I do not believe that reason and have never heard an argument that claims that. Certainly, licenses are irrelevant to people who live in small communities. In a small community, social pressure and personal knowledge works well. 25 years ago, Unix and Lisp programmers lived in such a community or many of them did. I think many programmers wish they still lived in such a community. But the wider world has intervened. Programming and its machines have become successful. Even my grand-neice uses a computer. We do not live in a small and isolated community any more. As for living in a bigger world: one could argue that laws and licenses are irrelevant since most of the world is `extra-legal'. Only regions like Western Europe and a few others are more or less `law abiding'. In much of the world, any organization with more than a billion US dollars or so per year to spend can corrupt enough officials for it to continue to do what it has done before. But again, I do not think that the rule of rich, greedy individuals is better than the rule of law. I have heard claims that rich, greedy individuals do make better rulers, and that their right to hinder me is good for others than me; but I have never welcomed that. Moreover, there are good arguments -- indeed I have made them -- that failure is an intrinsic problem of hierarchies that exclude change. (Failure may not occur in the short term, that is to say, in less than a couple of human generations.) Only when competitors are equally weak can such hierarchies last for thousands of years. So, to answer your questions again: a) the precise purpose of the GNU Free Documentation License is to offer a better alternative to greedy publishers, a better way to protect their investment in attention getting. The FSF puts its own documentation under the GFDL because its leaders believe that programmers, at least those involved in the GNU project, are poor at being `don't do what we do, do what we say' salesmen to people who are not programmers. b) the difference between a license that insists that commercial organizations fail in their purpose and a license that enables their purpose is vast. No one claims that companies that are unable recover costs will survive against companies that are able to revover costs. c) a project that hinders another in fulfilling its goal cannot expect to be supported by the second, except as charity. d) as an organization comes to realize that its primary business is politics in a deep sense -- that of changing business patterns -- and that the people in the organization are poor at politics with strangers who know nothing of computers and that competitors are out to destroy it, it makes more sense to offer licenses such as the GFDL as an alternative to licenses such as the `Creative Commons license with a commercial restriction'. -- Robert J. Chassell bob(a)rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc