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Free software needs free documentation

gnu.org

21–30 of 48 posts

Re: Free software needs free documentation

#21
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem listed in the article is specifically “freedom to copy, modify and redistribute”, not “free to have” O’Reilly would be fine, if they allowed you to modify the book as you please — but they don’t; like licensed software, you’ve only paid to access the content, but you don’t really own it. Basically every argument for FOSS is now being applied to the manual(s) as well

We really need an AGPL3 for documentation. If you read that documentation and then provide (consulting) services based on that knowledge, you really need to feed the profits back to the documentation authors.

What you're proposing amounts to "if you read this, you must give us money". That's way outside the scope of a license and is completely unenforceable.

It's also a great way to convince consultants to avoid your software entirely.

Re: Free software needs free documentation

#24
post #14
post #9

”[...] The issues for writings are not necessarily the same as those for software. For example, I don't think you or I are obliged to give permission to modify articles like this one, which describe our actions and our views. But there is a particular reason why the freedom to modify is crucial for documentation for free software. When people exercise their right to modify the software, and add or change its features…

very reasonable.

Unfortunately, although the intentions are good, the additional restrictions imposed by GFDL creates a lot of compatibility problems in practice. Nowadays, the use of GFDL is no longer recommended by default. Unless you specifically need the unique features in GFDL, the best practice is to use Creative Commons 4.0, either CC BY or CC BY-SA (if you want stronger copyleft than CC BY-SA, even the use of GPL is better in terms of compatibility).

The most prominent problem is the invariant sections and cover texts. It allows certain sections in a work to be unchangeable, such as the front-cover and back-cover texts, so that the information in the original publication won't be distorted. While it's very reasonable for a standalone book, but it would be a violation of basic expetation of free software if the documentation is to be treated as a subsection of the software itself. Thus, Debian packages software documentation separately, and classifies all docs with invariant sections as "non-free software". Also, the most common practice to publish documents under GFDL is to say "it's published under GFDL [version], with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts" to avoid the issue. But if you already do this, you don't really need GFDL.

The second related problem is that the GFDL is an independent license, so it's incompatible with GPL in both directions. A GPDL manual cannot use GPL code, and a GPL program cannot use code from the GFDL manual. GPL code to a GFDL documentation is effectively proprietary, the only way to use them is invoke the rights of fair use, which only allows a very limited portion of code to be used. Another possible workaround is to dual-license all code in a GFDL manual.

Even Eben Moglen, lead lawyer of the FSF, believes it's problematic. He says GFDL to him is like gravity to quantum mechanics.

> [In GPLv3] By expressing LGPL as just an additional permission on top of GPL we simplify our licensing landscape drastically. It's like for physics getting rid of a force, right? We just unified electro-weak, ok? The grand unified field theory still escapes us until the document licences too are just additional permissions on top of GPL. I don't know how we'll ever get there, that's gravity, it's really hard.

And the third problem is a practical one, the requirement of all works, even for those without Invariant Sections and Cover Texts, to include a full copy of the GFDL license. Again, while it's very reasonable for a standalone book, but it would be unsuitable for other types of creative works, such as short reference materials, maps, tour guide, or photos. The classic example is Wikipedia, if a reader ever wants to copy a section of the article or a single photograph, the inclusion of the full text of GFDL is legality required. It's why Wikipedia soon migrated to Creative Commons + GFDL to avoid this problem.

Re: Free software needs free documentation

#25
> The biggest deficiency in free operating systems is not in the software—it is the lack of good free manuals that we can include in these systems.

Aside from correcting trivial errors, this article is obsolete.

If you have something compelling to document about a feature of some free software tool, publish it in a blog. It's 100x more discoverable and easier to publish than whatever ships with Gnu or whatever distro.

Plus you get user-visible back-and-forth with timestamped comments on a blog, which at times are as valuable as the original (and often out-of-date) blog. Similarly, these comments are generally published with little friction, probably in less time than it takes an official doc maintainer to respond behind the scenes to a cranky doc question with "patches accepted."

Re: Free software needs free documentation

#28
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

very reasonable.

Unfortunately, although the intentions are good, the additional restrictions imposed by GFDL creates a lot of compatibility problems in practice. Nowadays, the use of GFDL is no longer recommended by default. Unless you specifically need the unique features in GFDL, the best practice is to use Creative Commons 4.0, either CC BY or CC BY-SA (if you want stronger copyleft than CC BY-SA, even the use of GPL is better in…

> It allows certain sections in a work to be unchangeable, such as the front-cover and back-cover texts, so that the information in the original publication won't be distorted.

That way, the author of the manual can receive credit. And also the author can insert whatever sponsorships, dedications, and website URLs in there. And this is key, there are a lot of scam websites that just existing websites and put ads outside the iframe.

CC-BY-SA is a weak copyleft– akin to LGPL while GFDL is akin to GPL.

Re: Free software needs free documentation

#29

I'm confused by this. Which free software has its documentation in a proprietary book? A textbook is not documentation². ROS, PyTorch, Tensorflow, Julia, Python, Emacs, you name it, all have free online documentation as well as non-free textbooks to learn those tools. Not sure about non-programming tools like Gimp or Blender. If the only way to learn how your software works is a print book, that's the issue, not the…

The article was originally written in 1996, and describes GNU policy. As a cultural artifact, it's been incredibly effective but is now outmoded, as what it describes is very solidly the norm, as you note. So today it serves as a statement of GNU policy and as a historical artifact, and isn't so much something that is relevant to today's readers.

Since the article specifically calls out Perl:

In the Perl 4 days (1991 until whenever Perl 5 (1994) gained critical mass), the O'Reilly book Programming Perl was the Perl documentation. Besides the book, the only other official documentation was the perl(1) man page, which (while lengthy at nearly 30,000 words) was not nearly as complete as the O'Reilly book.

Re: Free software needs free documentation

#30
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem listed in the article is specifically “freedom to copy, modify and redistribute”, not “free to have” O’Reilly would be fine, if they allowed you to modify the book as you please — but they don’t; like licensed software, you’ve only paid to access the content, but you don’t really own it. Basically every argument for FOSS is now being applied to the manual(s) as well

We really need an AGPL3 for documentation. If you read that documentation and then provide (consulting) services based on that knowledge, you really need to feed the profits back to the documentation authors.

The documentation AGPL equivalent would simply be that if you provide a modified copy of the docs remotely (eg online), you must still provide the documentation source and all rights to modify & redistribute further.

The AGPL just extends the GPL to apply in SaaS contexts — I don’t know how the documentation equivalent that would go anything close to modifying profit flow for consulting services

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