discuss: LDP "non-free" documents
Subject:
Re: LDP "non-free" documents
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
10 Mar 2005 20:46:09 -0000
Message-Id: <20050310204605.GT27314@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting Andrew M.A. Cater ####@####.####
> As a Debian developer, I was about to draft a long response to Rick
> Moen.
Since Andrew has mentioned this, here's the context. (I was urged by
Martin Wheeler to send the inquiry, and Martin assured me that Andrew
would not mind.)
From rick Wed Mar 9 18:28:04 2005
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 18:28:04 -0800
To: ####@####.####
Cc: Martin Wheeler ####@####.#### ####@####.####
Subject: Inquiry about Debian licensing pages
Dear Mr Cater:
Greetings. Martin Wheeler ####@####.#### suggested that I
consult you (not professionally!) on a Debian matter related to
licensing, as he says you are an attorney with a keen interest in Debian
issues. I apologise for intruding on your free time. If you lack time
or interest, I fully understand.
Martin and I both participate with the Linux Documentation Project.
(I maintain a HOWTO and a FAQ for the LDP.) I'm a longtime Debian
sysadmin, but have not gone through the New Maintainer process.
I am not an attorney. When I was employed at [company name snipped from
this post], I was the unofficial licensing expert (although an amateur).
Fortunately, my present concerns are more organisational than legal.
1. There are pages on Debian Project hosts that profess to classify
licences as to DFSG-free or not. Examples:
http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html
This is Barak A. Perlmutter's page (but clearly is on
a set of _personal_ pages, unlike the next two).
http://wiki.debian.net/?DFSGLicenses
I believe this to have been created by Joachim Breitner.
http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/
The person who maintains this page is not indicated.
I have seen many people referred to these pages, particularly the
latter, as speaking definitively for the Debian Project. LDP
volunteer Emma Jane Hogbin did exactly that, on the
####@####.#### mailing list, in context of her intent to
address Debian's rules about documentation licensing in her next
review of the LDP Author Guide.
Martin informs me that you subscribe to that list, and would have
seen the thread. My main concern is with the
http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ page, and secondarily with
the http://wiki.debian.net/?DFSGLicenses one.
2. My understanding of Debian governance, including as to speaking
definitively on licence DFSG-freeness, is as outlined here:
http://lists.tldp.org/index.cgi?1:mss:7165 Please pardon my
incorporating it by reference rather than inclusion; I'm trying to
be concise.
3. If my understanding of Debian governance is correct, then unless
the contents of those two pages can be vetted against General
Resolutions, decisions of the DPL, decisions of the Project
Secretary, decisions of various Deputies, or decisions of the
Technical Committee, the pages have zero authority -- though they
imply otherwise.
4. I have attempted to read all such General Resolutions and decisions
on record that address DFSG-freeness of documentation licensing,
and have been unable to vet those pages' contents.
5. I am thus tentatively concluding that the page are deceptive in
effect (though probably not in intent). I am tempted to post some
public pages of my own to publicise that point.
Any comments on the above would be welcome.
You might wonder why I care. One reason is that the pages' complaints
about some licenses strike me as being based in error (on the part of
various license-discuss participants) and careless misinterpretation of
particular license terms. Thus, the "licence summaries" strike me as
being, in at least a couple of cases, frivolous and unreliable.
As an example, the objection to the Creative Commons BY 1.0 licence's
trademark clause on http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/dls-006-ccby
strikes me as reflecting ignorance of trademark law and the purpose of
that clause.
The opinion was stated by Jeremy Hankins in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/04/msg00031.html summarising the
view of Nathanael Nerode in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/03/msg00268.html . Both seem
to not grasp that the clause merely states that Creative Commons conveys
no trademark licence.
This matters to me personally because other CC licenses with the same
clause strike me as clearly DFSG-free and highly useful, such as BY-SA
2.0.
Additionally, some of the things held to "excessively restrict
modification" (DFSG #3), such as CC BY 1.0's requirement that reference
to a licensor's name be purged from derivatives, are an absurd failure
of perspective. No legitimate modification need is barred by that,
surely.
Thank you again, for your time and trouble.
Best Regards,
Rick Moen
