Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Hyperbola: Other "Information for practical use" under a free license

[Luke Shumaker]

On Sun, 13 May 2018 09:47:22 -0400,
bill-auger wrote:
> 
> Citing from: https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:main:social_contract
> 
> > Hyperbola is free culture: All documentation and
> > cultural works included in Hyperbola are free
> > culture, with the exceptions of: works stating a
> > viewpoint, invariant sections and cover texts. All
> > documentation and cultural works created by or for
> > Hyperbola are free culture, with no exceptions.
...
> TBH just as a side note, that precise wording seems to be implying
> something that was perhaps not intended -

Since that item was borrowed from the Parabola Social Contract: If it
does say something not intended, we should also amend it in Parabola.

(I think I wrote the precise wording of that item; git says I did, but
maybe that commit stole it from someone else on the mailing list--I'm
too lazy to dig through the ML archives for that.)

>                                         - the intention here seems quite
> clearly to be nothing other than to allow for GFDL licensed
> documentation - the phrases: "works stating a viewpoint, invariant
> sections and cover texts" are taken straight from the GFDL definition -

That isn't meant to be 1 coherent exception, it is 3 separate
exceptions[1]; only the last 2 are really GFDL-related.  The GFDL
suggests that viewpoints be placed in invariant sections; we included
"works stating a viewpoint" as a separate exception from the
"invariant sections" exception to also cover things that aren't even
GFDL-licensed, like RMS essays distributed with Emacs[2].

[1]: Apparently I lost an argument about the Oxford Comma
[2]: That was the example I used when discussing it back then, but it
     seems that Emacs no longer includes them, and instead links to
     them on gnu.org.

> but in this context they imply that the hyperbola project would not ever
> be allowed to state any "viewpoint" because all hyperbola documentation
> is promised to be under a "free culture" license, with no exceptions;
> but "works stating a viewpoint" are stated explicitly here to be not
> "free culture" - perhaps that was intended - personally, i would applaud
> any software project that is dedicated to *not* expressing personal
> orthogonal "viewpoints"

It doesn't say that "works stating a viewpoint" are inherently not
Free Culture, it says that they are not *required* to be Free Culture,
unless they are produced "by or for" Parabola (Hyperbola), in which
case they are required to be Free Culture.

Parabola is allowed to express viewpoints, we simply must use Free
Culture licenses when we do it.

-- 
Happy hacking,
~ Luke Shumaker