Subject:
Re: new documentation license
From:
"Rodolfo J. Paiz" ####@####.####
Date:
25 Nov 2003 15:36:20 -0000
Message-Id: <6.0.0.22.0.20031125091942.025c8c68@mail.simpaticus.com>
At 07:47 11/24/2003, Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
>Don't include ldp procedures in the licence. Why would you do this?
>Make a "policy", "guidelines" or something like this. If you choose
>a "free" licence, this is no problem, because modifications by anyone
>are allowed. So you just have to decide when to include modifications
>by people other than the original author _in ldp_. But this has nothing
>to do with the licence.
Frank,
As all here know by now, I have just started writing Linux docs. However, I
do have some other writing experience and _lots_ of reading experience, and
I have never yet once in my life seen an excellent document (clear,
concise, coherent, useful, well-written, logically-structured) that was
written by a bunch of people. Outstanding written works tend to be written
by one or two people at most, in extremely close collaboration, even if
they include the work and input of dozens of others. Wiki pages and other
collaborative efforts have immense practical value, but they are hardly
ever "well-written"... mostly they are a mess. Great for comments,
feedback, discussion, and other things... lousy for reading as a document.
The document I wrote is mine. MINE. I get the credit for it if it's worth
anything, and I have created it to help others and specifically in the hope
of helping LDP improve their collection and of contributing to that effort.
However, this also means that I take the responsibility for maintaining it,
incorporating changes, comments, suggestions, and feedback to make it
better, but doing so in a way that keeps or improves the readability of the
document.
I will not allow just anyone to hack away at my writing. Most people's
spelling, grammar, syntax, and literary style are simply appalling (or, as
the average dude would say, "blow chunks.") So, on a personal level, I most
certainly DO NOT want a license that allows anyone to modify what I've
written, ESPECIALLY while my name is ont it (and of course, I don't want
anyone changing a comma, replacing my name with theirs, and distributing
the result either).
Documentation is not software, and it presents different issues to be
solved and different obstacles in the way of producing excellent results. I
am all in favor of the GPL for software, and freedom is truly a wonderful
thing... but let not liberty become libertinism.
This does not mean I would not be happy to grant many people the right to
modify and redistribute my document... but I do not want to see, as I said
above, someone else writing stuff that still has my name on it, or someone
else putting their name to stuff I wrote. In software, these issues do not
come up, but in writing text they do.
>A "free" licence after all definitions I know
>never includes a requirement to contact the original author before
>redistributing.
This is an excellent point; documentation (IMHO, in its original text,
unchanged, without modifications!) should be freely redistributable.
I will admit that I have an issue with people making money off HOWTO's,
which to me means someone publishing a book with only HOWTO's such that the
publisher really did no work at all but rather piggybacked on all of us,
and certainly does not include someone selling a Linux distro and packaging
the HOWTO docs with it. Anyone who specifically sets out to make a profit
based substantively on the use of my document should be sharing that money
with me as the author, but for this kind of document I would prefer that
said money be donated to LDP.
>Redistributing of modified versions without any restrictions is one of
>the core points of every definitions of a free licence. Don't touch
>this, then you have no problems with forking, overtaking and reviewing
>documents.
Then, personally, I don't want it. And I think many others will not either.
Again, documents are not software.
>There is a lot of collections of software out there. They all have
>procedures to deal with absent authors. And this is fully supported by
>licences like GPL, BSD. So why should there be a problem if you
>transport the freedoms of these licences to a documentation licence.
See above for my answer.
--
Rodolfo J. Paiz
####@####.####
