I did not know this until I read this post: http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2008/09/02/25-years-of-gnu/

On the personal blog of Mike Linksvayer (Creative Commons)

Therefor it seems silly not to use a more free license by the FSF in their use and production of cultural works.

Perhaps the FSF should (re)consider taking a position on whether works of culture should be free or not? Personally I would be very interested in the outcome and the arguments to support the outcome. Whatever that may be.

I think Stallman’s idea of treating personal works of opinion and technical work separately is very interesting and it’s something I agree with. However, I think that LugRadio’s real world experience with licensing their podcasts shows that choosing a very restrictive license isn’t such a good idea.

Building on what lucy said above: lucy got it in one. Check out RMS’ talks on copyright for more on this, or hear his talk from the FSF annual meeting a couple of years back where I asked him to expound on his views of how to more appropriately consider types of works and the permissions we should have with those works. His is an interesting division of published copyrighted works and concordant default permissions; well worth people’s time to consider. We should not conflate functional works (such as software) with statements of opinion (such as this movie).

If there is some derivative use which isn’t covered by fair use (for those regions which have such a thing), I’m guessing the copyright holder would be willing to work with you on licensing this in a manner more suitable for your needs. Frankly, I don’t see trimming the birthday cake part off as a reason to complain or not distribute copies. I think anyone you distribute this to will understand that this was a 25th birthday celebration and so as time goes on, this will be viewed in that light.

This is why you will not be criticized by the FSF for releasing Severed Fifth under a non-free license — even if people who work for and with the FSF have strong feelings on the subject.

Warbo – Someone has said something in a special context if you use only small parts and maybe even put it into a different context than if it possible to create some impression that the original author doesn’t want to creat. You see this quite often at news sites where something is quoted out of the context and so make people think something which the author never wanted to imply. Of course you can take your right to cite or use it as a base to draft your own speech but manipulating the speech of someone else is not something you need to get your work done, participate in the (digital) society, etc. That’s why not all works are equal.

Are the FSF just worried about people distributing versions without the “GNU+Linux” and the “gNewSense” parts? If so then it’s not a particularly respectful position to take. I think the FSF should get of their high horse, place a little more trust in the community and shrug off any troll who makes a bad joke using this kind of stuff. I’m sure many valuable contributions could be created using parts from this video, but they won’t be made due to the license.

The FSF campaigns for GNU and kin for user freedom, not because they-made-it-so-it-must-be-right. The same cannot be said of their non-software work.