discuss: LDP License (I'm way behind on LDP emails)
Subject:
LDP License (I'm way behind on LDP emails)
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
6 Feb 2004 04:23:58 -0000
Message-Id: <20040206033645.GA614@lafn.org>
I found this but can't seem to find any evidence that I actually sent it
out.
On Sat, Dec 20, 2003 at 08:29:19PM -0800, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting David Lawyer ####@####.####
> Getting back to my original point, LDP now has a veritable mess, where
> many HOWTOs and FAQs claim to be under the licence at
> http://www.tldp.org/COPYRIGHT.html or URLs that equate to that, but the
> licence displayed there is (often) _not_ the one those authors chose,
> because LDP made the tactical error of editing in place.
I pointed this out a few years ago. There is still another problem with
another LDP license which said that the HOWTO coordinator could change
the license. It was actually a license used by the HOWTO coordinator
but others used it for their own license and failed to change
"HOWTO coordinator" to their own name.
I don't think that all of the above is a very serious problem. Few
HOWTOs are still under this license. Suppose that someone does assume
it's under 2.0 when it's actually under say 1.3. No one, including the
author, likely has a copy of 1.3. So if no one has a copy of a
license, how is the document licensed?
So if someone wants to take over such a doc, they should first try to
contact the original author. If that fails, then they could assume (at
their own risk) that it's under 2.0. If the original author ever
complains and has found the real license, then one would need to follow
the real license. As an alternative, one could just rewrite the doc
from scratch and use their own license.
> Moreover, the licence history has been inadvertantly obscured. Isn't
> that worth fixing to the degree possible?
Yes, if it's easy to do, but it's not.
David Lawyer
