discuss: licence problems
Subject:
Re: [discuss] licence problems
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
24 Sep 2008 17:16:05 +0100
Message-Id: <20080924161559.GG32320@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting David Lawyer ####@####.####
> It would be nice if all wiki articles were GFDL. This makes it easy
> for users to understand what the rules are and anyone that wants to
> print them doesn't have to examine many different licenses.
I suppose so, but that's _not_ the question before us.
The question is whether a particular set of other licences, well known ones
that are genuinely free licences and already commonly used for
writings/documentation, are acceptable to LDP. If not, LDP may well end
up refusing valuable submissions for, I would point out, no particularly
compelling reason. I'd say deliberately refusing good submissions just
because they have the wrong free licence is not in LDP's interest --
particularly since GFDL itself isn't even a particularly good
licence[1], only one of the two best known (primarily on account of
Wikipedia).
> I think the proposal to contact authors and ask them to change the
> license to GFDL (no invariant sects.) is a good one.
GFDL _v. 1.2_ with no invariant sections, yes.
> But what about the cases where you can't find the author (or the cases
> where the author will not change the license, or can't because the
> co-author(s) can't be located)? In these cases, if the existing
> license allows modification they could be added to the wiki.
All of the licences I listed are, of course, compatible with that
objective: They're all forkable "free" licences. (Some are copyleft,
others are simple permissive licences.) Which fixes the maintenance
problem LDP is trying to solve.
> So I'm proposing that all wiki docs be GFDL except for cases where
> it's not feasible.
Again, that is _not_ the question before us. The question is whether
LDP will be willing to accept documents under the several other free
(forkable) documentation licences, other than GFDL 1.2 without invariant
sections.
[1] For one thing, it's horribly verbose, has that really
problematic DRM language, and is quite difficult to understand for both
of those reasons and others.
