Re: Boilerplate License Revision Proposal

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    I think (in theory) that a license should at least allow distributing
    a modification if the original author failed to adequately maintain
    the document.  Who is to judge what "adequately maintain" means?

There is no objective way to judge whether someone does "adequate
maintenance", because it is a subjective question.  But this criterion
has an even worse problem: if there are different versions of the
program, which version or versions should the document "adequately"
describe?  Would you really want the responsibility to decide?

This shows that "failure to adequately maintain" won't work as a
criterion.  It doesn't provide what the LDP needs.  The problem caused
by non-free documents has to be solved some other way.

The best way to solve it is to insist that all new LDP documents be
free.  Then the LDP won't have to worry about obtaining permission
to find a new maintainer for an orphan document.

What's more, if people have made a modified version of the program,
and the LDP decides that version is not important enough to support,
the people who develop that version will be free to do the work themselves
to adapt the document to their version.


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