Subject:
Re: [discuss] licence problems
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
29 Sep 2008 17:32:54 +0100
Message-Id: <20080929163251.GR1041@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting Jean-Daniel Dodin ####@####.####
> Rick Moen a écrit :
>
> > 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.
>
> problem many people, including wikipedia authors don't understand this
> like that. and to use anything you have to understand what it means!
No, sorry, I refuse to believe that this licence covering the
WordPerfect for Linux FAQ, for example, cannot be understood by Linux users:
This information is free; you can redistribute it and / or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation, version 2. Alternatively and at the
recipient's option, this work may be used freely under the
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence, or, at the recipient's option,
any later version.
In all the years it's been available, nobody has ever had a problem
understanding and complying with that licence. Hell, nobody's even
written to me to express confusion or seek clarification. It's pretty
much clear to all.
I cannot help notice that, even though _you_ positively barrage me and
others with questions, as if we were free-of-charge information
appliances for your personal benefit, you completely ignored mine. They
were:
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'm guessing that your answers are: Yes, you'd have refused my update.
No, you cannot explain (beyond "LDP needs simplicity"). Yes, you're
proposing to reverse LDP's policy.
> the real question is: is this mandatory? is this even usefull?
First, what sort of question is "Is it mandatory" in context of LDP
authorship? Nothing whatsoever about my FAQ was "mandatory": I wrote
it as a volunteer effort, to put something I knew in writing and serve a
community of readers.
That situation might possibly be familiar to you: It's also the one
that pertains to every single other bit of LDP documentation. Not a
single one of those was "mandatory".
You might have meant, in your rather impertinent question about my
volunteer creation, to ask whether I felt I was accomplishing something
necessary. Yes, I was: I was extending to my readers the benefits and
capabilities of BY-SA 2.0 without withdrawing those of GPLv2.
Thus, it was also "useful".
Frankly, I've already explained this. Your tendentious follow-up
questions suggest that you merely didn't like that answer.
> why do you think it necessary to not trust people having spent years
> in writing licences?
Why do you think my action had even the _tiniest_ connection to not
trusting people who've spent years writing licences? I already
explained why I added the extra option, and it had absolutely nothing to
do with trusting licence authors. Do you have some deep psychological
insight I utterly lack -- or is this just random bullshit?
> Franckly, I see all this licencing issue as a mess (not your position,
> the more general problem). so many different licences that are said
> equivallent, why? why can't the open source community come to an
> agreement.
I'm sorry, but have you _met_ the open source community? When have they
_ever_ all agreed on wanting only one thing?
> I saw at the time the creative common creation as a blessing, but it
> seems to have only complicated the system, adding even more licences,
> without making the others obsolete.
What on _earth_ are you talking about?
> all this gives the problem we have now: we don't know if we can update
> the HOWTOs.
What possible connection does this discussion have to whether LDP can
update the HOWTOs? You seem to have posted, here, a complete and utter
non sequitur.
Those HOWTOs that are presently under forkable, free licences can be
updated without special permission. The others cannot. Was that not
abundantly clear ages ago?
> *this is the problem*. How many HOWTO's authors can expect money from
> them? what do most of them think proprietary owners can make money
> with them? so why bother so much in the (free) licence used?
I don't even properly understand your questions, here, let alone
understand why you're asking them of _me_.
> is there any single licence that makes anybody happy. If so I would
> vote for it without problem. But I don't think this exists.
And this (above) is the reason I delayed several days in answering your
post: Giving a thorough answer to that question could take a long time,
and then you might well follow up with a dozen more questions, without
really caring about the time I devoted to the answer.
The simple, short answer is: of course not! People are perverse and
peculiar; people want diverse things.
As to a more-thorough answer: I could give you a rundown on the general
characteristics of each of the half-dozen or so licences commonly used
for documentation, and who dislikes each of them, why and where they're
coming from, and whether I think they're certfiably crazy or not. That
would take significant time, and at the end of it, there's significant
risk that you'd still be figuratively pounding the table and demanding
that reality be made simpler, right?
> > this time for _this_ mess?") Rubini and Terry _are_ happy with their
> > existing choice of GPLv2 or later licensing.
>
> we could then keep it.
LDP can keep (and maintain) the HOWTO under _any_ of the licensing
regimes discussed for it, certainly including the one I suggested to
Dinesh. Isn't that what we want?
Jean-Daniel, I am spending valuable time trying to explain some of these
matters to you. If your standard reaction continues to be ignoring what
I say and demanding that I make reality simpler, I am going to rapidly
lose interest, as it will become a poor use of my time.
> If only 6 (or so) licences are accepted by the LDP, we could at least
> sort the HOWTOs by licence use and work on these groups separately, if
> necessary. any combination of any of these licences makes only things
> more complicated for us
(Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?) What is "complicated" about just leaving the
author's forkable, free licence statement in place? LDP doesn't need to
do anything else.
> > If Sergiusz says he has problems with GPLv2, I will eat my hat.
> > On-camera. Without condiments.
>
> it's not even a "problem". The problem is the number of licences.
Look, reality is complex. Deal with it. If you think documentation
licensing is dismayingly diverse, you should see software licensing.
Man, if you were evaluating software licenses for OSI, you'd probably be
throwing fits.
> may be a licencing HOWTO is necessary :-)
Ironically, two seconds of Web searching would have found it for you:
http://catb.org/~esr/Licensing-HOWTO.html
Bad news: It describes reality, and thus is complex.
> so apart if you can give me the name of an universally accepted
> licence that is not was is decribed in our default one, I think we can
> stop here.
This question is either a bad joke or delusional: Even a maximally
permissive licence will have detractors.
