discuss: Thread: Documentation licensing

Quoting Rodolfo J. Paiz ####@####.####

> Just out of curiosity, why is it that everyone cares so much about Debian 
> guidelines? People act as though not abiding by Debian rules would get you 
> fined and thrown in jail sometimes...

Well, I don't -- I just answer questions about 'em.  Also, the DFSG is a
handy and reasonable standard yardstick for what's free software.
Conveniently, it's the same ruleset as the OSD (standard yardstick for
open source software), for historical reasons.

Core concept of both is the right to fork.  The rest tends to be
clarification for people less clear on what's entailed in _substantively_ 
having that right.

 --- "Rodolfo J. Paiz" ####@####.#### wrote: >
At 15:10 4/12/2004, Terrence Enger wrote:
> >Yes, my concern was with Debian policy rather than
> with law.
> 
> Just out of curiosity, why is it that everyone cares
> so much about Debian 
> guidelines? People act as though not abiding by
> Debian rules would get you 
> fined and thrown in jail sometimes...


Its important for people to care about those
guidelines if they have any respect for free software.
debian is one of the few volunteer distributions with
a very active community of developers and users. Its
part of the culture

Note: I am not a debian user

regards
Rahul

________________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your partner online. http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matrimony/

At 18:36 4/12/2004, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>  --- "Rodolfo J. Paiz" ####@####.#### wrote: >
> > Just out of curiosity, why is it that everyone cares
> > so much about Debian guidelines?
>
>Its important for people to care about those
>guidelines if they have any respect for free software.

<grin> No offense, Rahul, but that particular answer boils down to "this is 
the right way and anyone who is one of Us will do it this way." I was 
looking for a little more of the "why"... I have already concluded that 
many people regard them as being a good guide.

>debian is one of the few volunteer distributions with
>a very active community of developers and users.

<evil grin> Then why is Debian "stable" so damned old? <ducks for cover>


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
####@####.####
http://www.simpaticus.com

> ...
> Anyhow, CC have a considerable array of e-mail mailing lists, detailed
> here:  http://creativecommons.org/discuss  I'd speculate that their
> "Licenses, General" list might be a good place to ask.

I decided to have a look at http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/

  "If you are interested in licensing software documentation or 
   other supporting text for a piece of code, we recommend the 
   GNU Free Documentation License."

Talk about coming full circle!?! :-}








-- 
Greg Ferguson / LDP volunteer
####@####.####

 --- Ferg / LDP ####@####.#### wrote: > >
...
> > Anyhow, CC have a considerable array of e-mail
> mailing lists, detailed
> > here:  http://creativecommons.org/discuss  I'd
> speculate that their
> > "Licenses, General" list might be a good place to
> ask.
> 
> I decided to have a look at
> http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/
> 
>   "If you are interested in licensing software
> documentation or 
>    other supporting text for a piece of code, we
> recommend the 
>    GNU Free Documentation License."
> 
> Talk about coming full circle!?! :-}
> 


Yes. I did read that too but after discussing the
licensing issues with a few debian people I think that
creative commons license is still a better choice than
gnu fdl

regards
Rahul

________________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your partner online. http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matrimony/

Hi


> <grin> No offense, Rahul, but that particular answer
> boils down to "this is 
> the right way and anyone who is one of Us will do it
> this way." 



Not really. Its important even if you decide to ignore
it later on.Let me explain why. Free software and the
reasoning behind it is a idealogy of freedom according
to RMS and friends. 

There is also a practical advantages and
implementation issues.

Who decides what to do?
How do you manage code and stuff like that.

The debian guidelines is a clear set of rules on the
commitments to users. A social contract on what they
are trying to achieve.

I think its a good model to consider even if you
decide to do things in a different way

> <evil grin> Then why is Debian "stable" so damned
> old? <ducks for cover>

The nature of the distribution. Managing 140000+
packages across multiple architectures into a single
coherent distro is pretty hard thing to do. I think
they should make choices on what they provide by
default as part of the release and provide others as
alternatives. Userlinux seems to working towards that
goal. In the words of Bruce perens "playing favorites"
is what debian needs to improve release speed

regards
Rahul


________________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your partner online. http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matrimony/

Quoting Rahul Sundaram ####@####.####

> Yes. I did read that too but after discussing the licensing issues
> with a few debian people I think that creative commons license is
> still a better choice than gnu fdl

Moreover, I would speculate that CC's comment almost certainly reflects
the reaction practically everyone had for a long while:  "Since it's
going to be from the FSF, GFDL's bound to be a good bet.  Let's just
recommend it on faith until we've had a chance (and reason) to study it
further."

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/
makes clear that the comment in question was posted to that page some
time early last year (2003).  Serious analysis and criticism of the GFDL
didn't really spread until _late_ last year.  More than likely, the CC
people haven't gotten around to revisiting the question -- and may have
even forgotten they said it.

(On the other hand, they might have some reason to _still_ seriously
hold that view.  Anyone who thinks that's likely might want to ask
them.  My experience is that they're really slow to rewrite material on
their Web site even when such is needed.  And there's an outside chance
that they've not even heard of any controversy.  Best to ask.)

-- 
Cheers,                   The cynics among us might say:   "We laugh, 
Rick Moen                 monkeyboys -- Linux IS the mainstream UNIX now!
####@####.####       MuaHaHaHa!" but that would be rude. -- Jim Dennis

Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 08:09:41AM +1000, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> 
>>On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 08:58:51PM +0930, Glen Turner wrote:
>>
>>>Interestingly, those legal advisors did "get" free software. They just
>>>had a life-cycle view of copyrights -- they felt that if we maintained
>>>a HOWTO then we should hold strict control over the contents. And when
>>>we wished to cease maintaining the HOWTO we should assign the
>>>copyright to the LDP.
>>
>>I thought copyright assignment to the LDP was impossible, as the LDP 
>>doesn't exist as any sort of legal entity. Is this correct?
> 
> 
> Correct. Unless someone else knows explicitly otherwise...

To be fair to our legal advisors, they knew that.

They also knew that we plan to maintain the HOWTO and
so the question of whom copyright should be assigned
to afterwards in one for the future.

Given that, they did a service to their customer by not
devoting any billable hours to finding a suitable body
acceptable to the LDP to assign copyrigts to (since the
LDP may well incorporate in the future, etc).

When you deal with lawyers you quickly learn to limit
the questions at issue to the bare minimum whilst the
clock is ticking.

Cheers,
Glen