Re: GNU M4 1.4.5 released

[Santiago Vila]

Hello Eric and Gary.

> How is a license that permits only verbatim copies more free than one that
> explicitly states there are no invariant sections?  I honestly don't
> understand debian's policy.

Hmm, I must first apologize for my poor wording. In Debian, we have
discussed about the GNU FDL so much that we routinely use "invariant
sections" as a sorthand for "invariant sections, front-cover texts or
back-cover texts". The current manual for m4 does not have invariant
sections, the problem is that it has a front-cover text and a
back-cover text.

Now, to answer your question: The old license did not only permit
verbatim copies. It allowed also "modified versions of this manual
under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire
resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission
notice identical to this one". This was good enough for Debian main.

> > I'm sorry I didn't notice earlier;  I think the problem is this:
> > 
> > $ diff -u -D '1 week ago' doc/m4.texinfo
> > [[snip]]
> > -or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
> > -with the no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts,
> > -and with no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license is included in
> > [[snip]]
> > +Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover texts
> > +being ``A @acronym{GNU} Manual,'' and with the Back-Cover Texts as in
> > +(a) below.  A copy of the license is included in the section entitled
> > address@hidden Free Documentation License.''
> 
> No, that patch snippet is from CVS head, not branch-1_4.  And even that
> change (rev 1.3) was in Nov 2000, which post-dates release was 1.4o (Jan
> 2000), which is the last release I have found anywhere of CVS head.  NEWS
> talks about 1.4q in 2001, but I have not found a tarball of that, and
> there is no CVS label for that release.

That patch may be from cvs, but m4 1.4.4 had a simple documentation
license while 1.4.5 is GNU FDL licensed (I don't know CVS well enough
to determine how the license changed to the current one).

> > If Santiago agrees with me, I think we should undo that part of
> > the change, and release 1.4.6 relatively soon.
> 
> Or I could change the disclaimer to say there is no front-cover and no
> back-cover text, if that is better.

Any of the two will solve the problem for us. GNU FDL with no
invariant sections, no front-cover and no back-cover texts is ok for main.

Thanks.