discuss: licence problems
Subject:
Re: [discuss] licence problems
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
26 Sep 2008 17:32:21 +0100
Message-Id: <20080926163217.GF1041@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting Jean-Daniel Dodin ####@####.####
> simple to ask them directly, they advertise giving advices for no charge
I'm not sure what the question is.
Maintainers of LDP documentation will end up specifying licences of
their choosing, which LDP will insist on being (at minimum) some variety
or other of free licensing (either permissive or copyleft). Being free,
those licences will permit others to construct derivative works
elsewhere in a variety of ways that are compatible with the licensing,
including adding (e.g.) new-BSD-licensed addenda.
The LDP maintainer will, however, typically accept back patches only
if they are offered under the upstream licence, in the name of
simplicity. Done.
So, what exactly is the question?
If you're asking Software Freedom Law Center "What licence should we
use?", they'll almost certainly semiautomcatically say "You should insist
on GNU FDL", but all that tells you is that they're an adjunct of the
Free Software Foundation, and you already knew that.
> We can't spend days in searching for the better
> licence for each and any document, there are too many.
Who suggested "searching for the better licence for each and any
document"? I certainly didn't.
> we need simple, understandable by any, procedure, so I repeat here the
> end of my previous mail it's that who need badly an answer :-)
Well, one thing for damned sure, the FSF party line _is_ at least
simple. But not particularly in LDP's interest, unless you think
reducing the number of acceptable documents for no better reason than
the pursuit of uniformity is somehow good for LDP.
> * How can we, practically, know if a document proposed for LDP
> inclusion is compatible with our goals?
The simple way: If it uses a known free licence from the obvious list
of about five ones commonly used, then there's obviously no problem.
Alternatively, LDP _could_ choose to reject all contributions that don't
arrive bearing exactly the one particular licence LDP thinks it wants. I
personally think rejecting good documents under real free licences would
be a moderately suicidal thing for LDP to do. Obviously, some people
here think otherwise -- as, probably, will SFLC. Good luck with that.
