Subject: Re: LDP and FSF and copyrights
From: [email-masked] (Matt Welsh)
To: Linux Documentation Project writers <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 1995 11:53:59 EDT

[Forwarded from RMS. --mdw]

--- Forwarded mail from Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>

>From [email-masked]  Sun Jul 23 02:05:23 1995
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 1995 02:05:17 -0400
From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
cc: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Subject: Re: LDP and FSF and copyrights
Status: O

[Please forward this to ldp-l]

    It seems that I could come up with a complex license that would allow
    someone to edit the book as long as they didn't touch certain sections

Not much complexity is needed.  The Emacs manual's copying conditions
are just 22 lines, and only 7 of them concern the sections that
mustn't be changed.

    or modify material in certain ways.  But this seems, to me, more 
    restrictive than simply allowing me to act as a filter on a case-by-case
    basis.

It's impossible to be more restrictive than what you are doing now,
because right now we have exactly zero freedom to modify the text.  We
cannot have any less.  (The possibility of asking someone for
permission is not freedom.)

If we could modify all except a few sections (of personal views), that
would give us all the freedom that we need in practice.  We would go
from zero freedom to sufficient freedom.  This is a big step forward.

--- End of forwarded message from Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>