Journal einhverfr's Journal: Proposal for a new Free Software License 1
The purpose of this license would be to provide better compatibility between "Free Documentation" and "Free Software." Currently, one of the big things hampering this collaboration is the inability to include material, say, from the GFDL in the help files of a GPL program. This proposal would rectify this by ensuring:
1) No auxiliary countent could be produced in DRM-ridden versions
2) Auxiliary content with invariant sections could still be used.
As in the GFDL, invariant sections could include neither code nor functional documentation, but could include things like political arguments and force these to be displayed in startup messages, code comments, help files and the like. Some flexibility would be allowed, so if help files with invariant sections were removed from a distribution, the same invariant sections could be distributed with the software in other means.
I have asked RMS for permission to create a derivative license of the GPL v3 which would allow invariant sections provided they are scoped similarly to the GFDL. We will see what the response is.
In case anyone was wondering (Score:2)
this was an April Fools prank.
Obviously such a license would be no more free than the BSD license with the obnoxious advertising clause. It does make you wonder though why such a thing is a BAD thing when used by Berkeley but a GOOD thing when done by GNU.....