discuss: licence problems
Subject:
Re: [discuss] licence problems
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
26 Sep 2008 19:11:35 +0100
Message-Id: <20080926181133.GG1041@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting Jean-Daniel Dodin ####@####.####
> > I'm not sure what the question is.
>
> the licence question is a permanent source of problems here (and in
> other places also). Most documentation web sites allow only one licence.
I'm still not sure what specific question you're proposing to ask of
FSF's litigation annex (the Software Freedom Law Center) -- or, for that
matter, why you wouldn't expect that an FSF outfit's answer to pretty
nearly any question about documentation will be "You should use GNU FDL
wherever possible."
> many maintainer of documentation asks us what licence they have to
> use. I think we must have a simple answer
{shrug} I'm just trying to discourage you from advocating any "simple
answer" that injures LDP's interests -- and also pointing out that
licensing and copyright law cannot be rendered "simple" just because one
finds complexity inconvenient.
Most pointless complexity can be avoided by accepting only documents
under reasonably licences of known characteristics in the first place,
and then accepting back only patches offered under the upstream licence.
Uniform licensing across LDP's entire collection is not necessary
towards that goal, and attempting to achieve it would _very_ likely mean
eschewing good documentation for no compelling reason.
> > 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.
>
> you said:
>
> "Let's look at that. The Software Freedom Law Center -- one of the
> few that I really respect"
Oh, please. My full quotation was: "The Software Freedom Law Center --
one of the few that I really respect (though one must always be aware
that they push the FSF agenda)"
Why are you now surprised that I am saying that they push the FSF
agenda, when that's literally, precisely, exactly what I said the first
time?
> so, any of the 6 (not 5) licences listed here:
> http://wiki.tldp.org/LdpWikiDefaultLicence/comments
> allow us to work as expected?
In my view, certainly.[1] (And six is indeed "about five". I didn't
go around counting them. Thus the term "about".)
> what about licences written by the author? shoul we reject them (I
> think of the boiler plate previous LDP licence
> http://tldp.org/manifesto.html)
I don't know about you, but there are limits to my time and effort
available for dealing with gratuitous problems. So, if someone says to
me "Hi, I want to contribute material to your project, but decline to
use any of the traditional and well-understood licences, and instead
want to use something I've custom-written", I would tend to lose
interest and spend my limited volunteer time doing other things.
This issue arose a few days ago over at _Linux Gazette_ magazine, where
I'm one of the editors and the in-house licensing guy. A contributor
said he wished to contribute articles under a free-for-noncommercial-use
licence. When we said no, he asked us to amend our Web site to include
an explanation about why his preferred licensing wasn't acceptable. We
said no again. Basically, we said that he can submit anything he wants,
but if it's not obviously either the same as or obviously equivalent to
what _Linux Gazette_ normally uses, editor-in-chief Ben Okopnik is
likely to decline the article entirely.
(I can send you a copy of the correspondence offlist, if you care.)
> but we shouldn't ask the author to use complicated system as dual
> licencing if we can avoid it.
Please notice that I never so proposed.
I mentioned the idea to Senthil to solve a particular problem that he
described, where the HOWTO authors of record prefer GPLv2 and dislike
GFDL, and where -- for reasons I still cannot understand but probably
approximate "Let's do what Wikipedia does" -- most posters on this
thread profess to like GFDL.
[1] As I mentioned upthread, GPL licensing on documentation creates the
misfeature where, absent special permission to the contrary, anyone
republishing the docs in a book is obliged to either include the
"preferred form" (Docbook XML or whatever) or a written offer to provide
it to any requestor good for three years. Whether this is a problem for
LDP is a judgement call that is worth contemplating.
