Subject:
Re: [discuss] licence problems
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
26 Sep 2008 22:53:01 +0100
Message-Id: <20080926215251.GJ1041@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting Jean-Daniel Dodin ####@####.####
> ?? you know what simple answer I mean, it's
>
> 1) preferably the default (GFDL without...) licence
> 2) any of the other quoted licence, and one only
No, honestly I had no clear idea what you meant by "I think we must have
a simple answer"; thus my qualms about what you might have meant.
Anyhow, once again, I would want to apply your suggested criteria to a
specific example. Consider the WordPerfect for Linux FAQ, which I
first submitted to LDP in August 2002 under GPLv2 terms. It was
accepted.
In early 2004, I decided that Creative Commons's Attribution-ShareAlike
1.0 ("BY-SA 1.0") copyleft licence had been well enough proven in the
field and had enough merits that I would begin letting recipients
satisfy _either_ GPLv2 _or_ alternatively BY-SA 1.0's copyleft
obligation to enjoy access to my reserved rights. So, I submitted FAQ
v. 1.4.17 and later with those additional permissions.
Far from complicating anyone's life or imposing burdens, that made
recipients' lives easier, by meeting the reciprocal (copyleft)
obligation in either of two, equally sufficient ways.
So, are you saying that, if you'd been setting policy for LDP in 2004,
you'd have refused my 1.4.17 revision and (in effect) told me to go
elsewhere? Can you explain why such refusal because of my effrontery in
giving users _more_ freedom would have been in LDP's interest?
Fortunately, LDP had no such policy in 2004, with the result that it did
not stupidly throw away good free documentation for no compelling
reason. If I understand you correctly, are you proposing to reverse
that policy?
> I don't see why. I never said we should to reject any document, this
> is only your words.
I apologise if I misunderstood. Are you not proposing, above, to in the
future refuse dual-licensed works?
> sorry, for me "free agenda" is http://www.agendadulibre.org/.
> vocabulary problem only.
Not a problem. It sounds like yet another example of inadequecies in
the English language (e.g., the infamous inability to distinguish
properly between gratis and libre).
> speaking of previous LDP boiler plate licence, we will have probably
> to cope with it from time to time. I don't know why it was writtent in
> the first place.
Yeah, I think you're right.
> But I'm ready to accept to say: "please can you use the default
> licence if possible, any of the quoted licence if you really prefere,
> but if you have a very important work under any other free licence, we
> may accept it after discussion"
Sounds reasonable to me.
> > 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,
>
> but said they where ready to accept it!
>
> here I quote the OP (of the other thread)
>
> "Both Rubini and Terry, expressed some displeasure with GFDL
> (espcially with its clause of invariant sections), but are fine with
> relicensing the docs, "should we need it".
>
> Two questions:
> 1) Do we need to relicense them? If yes, we have the permission. "
>
> and the default licence don't have the invarient section, so it seems
> to me it mostly comply with authors demand
That is true -- _but_ they made clear that they aren't happy with it.
(Many, many people feel this way about GFDL. It's not just the
invariants issue and/or the problematic DRM language. I remember when
the first versions came out. We all were really looking forward to
seeing it, and the predominant reaction was disbelief: "We waited all
this time for _this_ mess?") Rubini and Terry _are_ happy with their
existing choice of GPLv2 or later licensing.
My suggestion was, thus, to respect the authors' wishes, and continue to
show gratitutude for their work. Which I'd suggest is an important
priority for LDP, and also helpful to its survival and development. The
authors said (paraphrased) that we can move the document to pure "GFDL
1.2 or later with no invariant sections and no front-cover or back-cover
texts" if we _had_ to. Guess what? We don't have to. We (or rather
Senthil) can offer the recipient the option to satify _either_ set of
conditions.
Thus my suggestion to Senthil, which I hope he'll consider following.
> 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.
>
> first advice here
> http://lists.tldp.org/go.to?list=discuss&cmd=showmsg&msgnum=11093
> and this probably mean less problems with debian :-?
If Sergiusz says he has problems with GPLv2, I will eat my hat.
On-camera. Without condiments.
