From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 31574 invoked by alias); 27 May 2010 04:19:55 -0000 Received: (qmail 31557 invoked by uid 22791); 27 May 2010 04:19:54 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_20,T_RP_MATCHES_RCVD X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from smtp4.Stanford.EDU (HELO smtp.stanford.edu) (171.67.219.84) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Thu, 27 May 2010 04:19:51 +0000 Received: from smtp.stanford.edu (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by localhost (Postfix) with SMTP id D1720D0C8 for ; Wed, 26 May 2010 21:19:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.67.225.134]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.stanford.edu (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9D086D0C2 for ; Wed, 26 May 2010 21:19:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: by windlord.stanford.edu (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 9145A2F460; Wed, 26 May 2010 21:19:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Russ Allbery To: GCC Subject: Re: GFDL/GPL issues In-Reply-To: <4BFD6646.7010500@codesourcery.com> (Mark Mitchell's message of "Wed, 26 May 2010 11:19:50 -0700") References: <4BFC6EF0.4090908@codesourcery.com> <1274853403.2089.21.camel@glinka> <4BFD44AB.6060402@codesourcery.com> <1274896995.3572.26.camel@glinka> <4BFD6646.7010500@codesourcery.com> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1 (gnu/linux) Date: Thu, 27 May 2010 05:10:00 -0000 Message-ID: <87k4qqj7ru.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org X-SW-Source: 2010-05/txt/msg00599.txt.bz2 Mark Mitchell writes: > Basile Starynkevitch wrote: >> Does that mean that even if a MELT plugin package appears in Debian, it >> could not contain any documentation? > I thought Debian didn't like the GFDL at all. But, in any case, that's > really a question for the Debian folks; I don't have any involvement in > Debian. This is not the place to discuss this in any further detail, obviously, but just to clarify for those watching this part of the discussion: Debian is not horribly happy with the GFDL, but does consider it to be a free license provided that there are no Front Cover or Back Cover texts and no Invariant Sections. Debian judges all licenses for all material by the same DFSG standards as software licenses and considers the presence of texts covered by those three provisions of the GFDL to be unmodifiable sections, hence non-free, and not permitted in the Debian distribution. But as long as that aspect of the license is not used, the GFDL is a DFSG-free license. Provided that the software does not conflict with the terms of the GPL or GFDL by combining things with conflicting terms in such a way as to make them unredistributable (and dual-licensing would resolve that, obviously), I don't believe Debian would have a problem with the situation that you describe. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)