4 ms·

If you change someone else's words, they are no longer their words. Most licenses require modified versions to be marked as such. So misrepresenting a modified

by yarrel 10y ago

If you change someone else's words, they are no longer their words. Most licenses require modified versions to be marked as such. So misrepresenting a modified version of, say, the GNU Manifesto as Stallman's original wouldn't be allowed by the license.

nabla9 10y ago
There is no reason for anyone take GNU manfiesto and modify it unless thy want to ride on Stallman's opinon. If someone can't write their own manifesto without copy pasting, they probably should not write manifesto. There is no value or reason to modify opinion works.
- huxley 10y ago
  Sorry but that's not true, there are plenty of reasons to do so, in particular to provide context, commentary and explanation. When someone annotates a text, they are modifying it. It's called glossing, it has a long and academically valuable history. When Martin Gardner created the "Annotated Alice", he took an existing work by Lewis Carroll and added his explanations and commentary. This was incredibly useful and just the sort of thing that the FSF policy prohibits. As time passes this sort of glossing will only become more valuable. Jeez, even the FSF has had to add footnotes to the GNU Manifesto because of terminological changes and to clear up confusions (and they should add more, pretty much only greybeards like me can remember some of the hardware and protocols he names in the manifesto) To allow the FSF to control contextualization of the GNU Manifesto is against the ideals of the manifesto itself, to quote RMS: "'Control over the use of one's ideas' really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult."
  - nabla9 10y ago
    >This was incredibly useful and just the sort of thing that the FSF policy prohibits. No. FSF policy is for works of opinion. No Derivatives licenses do not prevent people from making fair uses.

by yarrel 10y ago

nabla9 10y ago

There is no reason for anyone take GNU manfiesto and modify it unless thy want to ride on Stallman's opinon. If someone can't write their own manifesto without copy pasting, they probably should not write manifesto. There is no value or reason to modify opinion works.

huxley 10y ago
Sorry but that's not true, there are plenty of reasons to do so, in particular to provide context, commentary and explanation. When someone annotates a text, they are modifying it. It's called glossing, it has a long and academically valuable history. When Martin Gardner created the "Annotated Alice", he took an existing work by Lewis Carroll and added his explanations and commentary. This was incredibly useful and just the sort of thing that the FSF policy prohibits. As time passes this sort of glossing will only become more valuable. Jeez, even the FSF has had to add footnotes to the GNU Manifesto because of terminological changes and to clear up confusions (and they should add more, pretty much only greybeards like me can remember some of the hardware and protocols he names in the manifesto) To allow the FSF to control contextualization of the GNU Manifesto is against the ideals of the manifesto itself, to quote RMS: "'Control over the use of one's ideas' really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult."
- nabla9 10y ago
  >This was incredibly useful and just the sort of thing that the FSF policy prohibits. No. FSF policy is for works of opinion. No Derivatives licenses do not prevent people from making fair uses.