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

"Robert J. Chassell" <bob(a)rattlesnake.com&gt; writes: [Lots of other explanation deleted] This is all very fine and explains the reason for both the GFDL and the GPL pretty much equally. It does not explain, however: 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)? b) is the difference this makes worth the trouble it causes? 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? 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, not least of all because the fork does not have the permission of the FSF to change the licence for old derived material to the GFDL, even in the case (which is not the current case) that they'd wanted to do it? In short, in this manner we are creating an insurmountable border for anybody but the FSF to past versions of the manual, as well as to current versions of the Emacs code. I don't like it. This has nothing to do with liking or not liking the GFDL itself: as I already stated it would probably be my preferred manner of publishing a book that was intended mainly for publishing in the first place, and that was not as tightly coupled with software as most Texinfo manuals are. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum