[iDC] Free Manuals for Free Software (and the ethics of collaborative critique)
adam hyde
adam at flossmanuals.net
Wed Oct 15 15:18:29 UTC 2008
hi Biella,
Ok...so your points have sunk into my lethargic brain like a rock in
mud. Your comments are spot on, and I will amend the article to include
more of the Debian arguments in there. Many thanks for spending the time
on such a useful critique.
On the topic of the FDL...have you, or has anyone, heard about the
progress of the FDL and sFDL redraft? The process seems to have
stalled...I heard a rumour that the FSF was rethinking the 'get out of
the FDL free' position with regard to Wikipedia...any idea what is going
on there?
adam
On Thu, 2008-10-09 at 10:28 -0400, Gabriella Coleman wrote:
> Adam,
>
> My comments below only pertain to the indigenous (i.e. developer)
> critiques of the FDL which I think are worth mentioning in just few
> paragraphs for reasons I details below. In short, it can bolster your
> argument and I think it is the ethically right thing to do (details below).
>
> I have some other comments about the rest of your essay, which is so
> spot on and I just want to point to one resource that can help with the
> question of documentation (insight's drawn from Richard Sennet's recent
> book, the Craftsman) but that email is for later.
>
> >
> > I was trying to avoid that argument a little because Debian seemed to
> > endorse the FDL as long as 'invariant sections' were not present in the
> > text. My point is that the FDL is more fundamentally crippled because of
> > its embedded rationale - to support a small business publishing model.
> > It seemed to me that Debian critiqued the formal legal freedoms and gave
> > the license a 'pass' under certain circumstances without addressing the
> > tangled rationale that makes the license a real mess.
>
>
> If one reads and follows the debates (though it was a multi-month,
> nearly year long debate so it requires some time), they do address the
> "tangled" rationale (they love to debate the law, after all and are
> logic fetishist too).
>
> What is most clear is that most vehemently opposed the FDL (and many
> noted the irony that Stallman supported a non-free license). Here is
> just one place where they attacked the rationale using a lot of their
> own “rationales”
>
> http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml
>
> which concludes:
>
> “It is not possible to borrow text from a GFDL'd manual and
> incorporate it in any free software program whatsoever.
> This is not a mere license incompatibility. It's not just
> that the GFDL is incompatible with this or that free
> software license: it's that it is fundamentally incompatible
> with any free software license whatsoever.
> So if you write a new program, and you have no commitments
> at all about what license you want to use, saving only that
> it be a free license, you cannot include GFDL'd text.
>
> The GNU FDL, as it stands today, does not meet the Debian
> Free Software Guidelines. There are significant problems
> with the license, as detailed above; and, as such, we
> cannot accept works licensed unde the GNU FDL into our
> distribution.”
>
> I also think it is incorrect to say they endorse the FDL just because
> they allow its use under certain conditions. If one looks at what the
> majority of Developers do with their own documentation, they basically
> steer entirely clear of the FDL and this sends a very strong message
> that the FDL is broken/sucks/unworthy/not right etc.
>
> The majority of developers use the GPL for their documentation because
> they also feel like documentation must be open to modification. Or they
> don't even use a separate license, because they see documentation and
> software as fundamentally connected and thus feel it should enjoy all
> the freedoms that software has.
>
> They were just stuck and struck with the problem that they had GNU/FSF
> documentation in the distribution and basically by passing the GR, which
> made the FDL permissible only under certain conditions, they disabled
> the most onerous restriction in the FDL that made it unfree according to
> th DFSG (and as a result they also had to migrate a number of GNU/FSF
> documentation to non-free).
>
> I think this resolution sends a pretty strong message, which says the
> FDL is broken, we don't support it, and if you must use it, you can use
> it only under these conditions (and alas, no one uses it! :-). And
> again, the most important fact may not be the GR but the fact that
> developers themselves don't use the FDL. They just had to do something
> about it since they do have GNU/FSF documentation in the distro and had
> to make a decision about how to treat it.
>
> Anyone who has gotten this far (probably just Adam) is thinking: "wow,
> she is really nitpicky and knows just a little bit too much about Debian
> politics!" In other words, why belabor this point?
>
> I think it is important for two reasons, one that has to do with your
> own argument and the other about the ethics of collaboration not in
> realm of technology but in the realm of political critique.
>
> I think mentioning Debian's native critique can bolster your own
> arguments. If there is a small army of developers who question the FDL,
> well there must be something really off with the license, no? The
> difference here is between one person making a statement vs. a group of
> people making a statement. There is a power that comes from numbers.
> What people do, in other words, can be marshalled as a great source of
> evidence.
>
> Finally, if we are inspired by F/OSS because developers collaborate and
> work together to find technical solutions, I think it is ethically
> important to recognize they also collaborate in the realm of ethics and
> law as well and we can chose to be part of the conversation or fork ours
> and make no connection to existing ones.
>
> Without even mentioning their vigorous debate and the heart of their
> critique and their solution, you risk portraying your critique of the
> FDL as something new. But in fact some version of of it has existed
> within the very developer community and for years.
>
> In the spirit of collaboration, I would stake your own claim about the
> FDL, but also note how you are contributing to and extending an existing
> conversation. Too often developers are portrayed as closed minded
> tech-wonks who care for nothing but technology. This is patently wrong.
> They are thinking through these legal/ethical issues and it analytically
> and politically pays to pay attention to what they are saying even if it
> has its limits.
>
> That being said, this does not mean Debian needs to be the sole or
> primary focus of your essay. No way. Your arguments are your own, they
> are strong and most important, are written in a way that the
> non-developer world can munch on, digest, and understand (and you are
> calling for a new way to write documentation and this is the real heart
> of your essay and why this project is important and new and must go
> forward).
>
> But just couple of paragraphs on Debian's critiques (and perhaps the
> limits of their critique as well) would boost your own arguments and
> connect your critique to the existing history of debate over the FDL.
>
> Maybe I am totally off here so I would love to hear if this is just
> makes things more complicated? Again I like to think our critique is
> collective as well as individual so I like to think about how we honor
> and make explicit whenever we can.
>
>
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--
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
http://www.flossmanuals.net
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