From: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
To: David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
torvalds@transmeta.com, mochel@osdl.org,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: GFDL in the kernel tree
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 18:10:20 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20030615181020.A19242@infradead.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <3EEC9946.9090308@pacbell.net>; from david-b@pacbell.net on Sun, Jun 15, 2003 at 09:05:26AM -0700
On Sun, Jun 15, 2003 at 09:05:26AM -0700, David Brownell wrote:
> Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > 2.5.71 introduces two GFDL-licensed files in the kernel tree...
>
> A "grep" in Documentation/DocBook shows me three GFDL files,
> last time I grepped there were none. So I was aware that
> adding one would likely raise some issues ... evidently
> a variety of people have noticed that GPL for docs/specs
> isn't the best solution.
My preferred license for documentation is 2clause BSD because
some of the GPL legalese is strange for docs at least..
But GFDL really is a horrible license.
> But there's a potential issue for kerneldoc for one particular
> structure, "usb_ctrlrequest", which was merged into 2.5 from a
> patch on 2/2/2002 ... I think I know who contributed that patch.
> If that author isn't willing to let that text be covered by
> GFDL, and for some reason I can't replace it with similar text
> that is (mostly pointing to the USB spec for details), I'll pull
> that bit out. In short: This particular issue is fixable.
Well, it is fixable but it's the best example of why am incompatible
documentation license is evil.
> Only when those sections are used. Which none of those three
> files do; all that doc is Free (GPL-compatible) by Debian terms.
> (Modulo minor issues to be worked.)
debian-legacl had more issue, may they be minor or not. The
biggest problem with the GFDL in the free software context is
it's GPL incompatiblity.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2003-06-15 16:57 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2003-06-15 13:07 GFDL in the kernel tree Christoph Hellwig
2003-06-15 16:05 ` David Brownell
2003-06-15 17:10 ` Christoph Hellwig [this message]
2003-06-15 16:48 ` Linus Torvalds
2003-06-15 17:11 ` Christoph Hellwig
2003-06-16 15:38 ` Patrick Mochel
2003-06-16 16:04 ` Richard B. Johnson
2003-06-16 18:45 Downing, Thomas
2003-06-16 19:21 ` viro
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