Subject:
Re: [discuss] licence problems
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
23 Sep 2008 00:56:43 +0100
Message-Id: <20080922235638.GV32320@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting Jean-Daniel Dodin ####@####.####
> the licence problem have to be cleared before we can really work. I
> wrote a letter to Guilhem Aznar (he seems to work for FSF) asking help
> and add a line in the task list.
>
> *we need a lawyer* or a licence expert.
David Lawyer added:
> Well, Rick Moen and I know something about licenses.
I'll be glad to help to the extent I can. I'm not an attorney, and
am less well informed on European copyright law than I'd like (mostly
US, Canada, and Australia -- with some UK), but I studied quite a bit of
business law for my early career in accounting and finance, and have
participated in OSI's licence-review process for a long time, etc.
> * I think we agree on the need to use GFDL on the wiki every time it's
> possible. We have to look closely at this (invariant??) and what it
> means, but given it's used for wikipedia, it should be good for us :-)
GFDL with no invariant sections is a decent licence for documentation.
At minimum, people have gotten accustomed to its peculiarities. ;->
I personally think TLDP should be _willing_ to accept (new) documents
under any halfway reasonable free licence ("free" meaning permitting
reuse for any purpose, and creation/distribution of derivative works.
Reasonable licences (IMO) include Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0, Creative
Commons BY 3.0, and Open Publication License 1.0 with no options. It
also (IMO) includes GPLv2 (maybe), GPLv3 (maybe), new-BSD, and MIT/X.
(See below.)
I suggest[1] that GFDL 1.2 or later without invariant sections be
recommend and requested to authors. If authors nonetheless specify a
reasonable licence that isn't GFDL, I suggest accepting the submission.
> * is GPL usable on the (a) wiki?
Of course it is. There's a persistent misconception that software
licences cannot or should not be used for software. Here's an
explanation of how to use GPLv2 for documentation:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonsoftware-copyleft.html
These days, FSF deprecates doing so, but that's mainly politics: They're
pushing GFDL, so they don't talk about using other established
copyleft licences for that purpose, any more. And GFDL exists in part
so that invariant sections such as copies of the GNU Manifesto can be
put into GNU documentation and not be removable by downstream
redistributors. (Again, I'm not saying it's a bad licences; I'm just
saying it arose in a political context.)
For similar reasons, new-BSD and MIT/X can be used easily and without
problems for docs, on wikis and off. (I'd have to think about GPLv3
before making the same claim, as there are some tricky bits to it.)
There is one longterm disadvantage to GPLv2 on TLDP docs: Imagine that
someone wants to publish a bunch of TLDP HOWTOs in a book. That book
would have to either include the "preferred form" of any GPLv2 docs
(Docbook XML, MediaWiki markup, or whatever) or a written offer, open to
any party, good for receiving a copy of that preferred form within the
following three years. Pretty burdensome. So, if TLDP wants docs to
be book-publishable within reason, then GPLv[23] are not "reasonable".
If that's not important, than they probably are.
> * what can we do if a HWOTO's author is unreachable: probably as
> already said: make the HOWTO page readonly, but add a discussion page
> write enabled. (or move to "obsolete"...)
Yes. As M. Guylhem Aznar has said, sadly those docs need to be replaced
or dropped, over the long term.
Apologies for being late to reply: I've been on holiday for a couple of
weeks.
[1] Personally, I think Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 is a better
documentation licence. However, it's not worth making a fuss over,
since GFDL without invariants clearly is popular and is perfectly OK.
