discuss: licence problems
Subject:
Re: [discuss] licence problems
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
29 Sep 2008 21:26:04 +0100
Message-Id: <20080929202600.GU1041@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting Jean-Daniel Dodin ####@####.####
> you probably didn't read the mails in order. we already discuss all
> this. that we agree or not have little importance. if the licence page
> of the wiki have your agreeent, all is nice (if not, write one...).
All of the above statements seem correct as phrased, but I can't help
thinking you're trying to imply something beyond the literal wording;
otherwise, quite a bit of the other things you've been saying don't
quite fit. I'm still trying to figure out what the issue is: Maybe
you're ascribing some special importance to the "LDP Wiki Default
Licence"? (See below.) It's difficult to say, but this issue should
not be so difficult to grasp.
> > 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?
>
> other people (not me, not you) began to copy HOWTOs to the wiki
> without adressing the licence problem. then stopped. If all the HOWTOs
> had the same licence, we would not even have to ask the question, is
> not that simpler?
Yes, but (1) nobody could ever have achieved that goal within reason in
the first place, and (2) it isn't even necessary. All that would have
been required would have been actually applying the (old) manifesto.
> > The simple, short answer is: of course not! People are perverse and
> > peculiar; people want diverse things.
>
> at present time, people vote for wikis like wikipedia where they have
> no choice
Ah, perhaps here is where your problem lies: You are not correct!
Nothing prevents someone from posting a work to Wikipedia under the
author's choice of licensing terms. The mere fact that Wikipeidia
specifies a default licence _in no way_ determines what permission a
contributor grants.
Wikipedia's setup permits contributors to specify GFDL v. 1.2 with no
invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts through the
action of posting an article (or revision) without licensing indications
to the contrary. Copyright law recognises owners' grants of permission
through conduct, you see. However, the mere fact that Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc. claims (on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
and elsewhere) that anyone who contributes categorically and
automatically "thereby licenses it to the public under the GFDL" doesn't
make that actually true.
Of course, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. can certainly elect to refuse
contributions that are offered under different terms of usage. It might
be interesting to post a non-trivial article to Wikipedia under explicit
new-BSD licensing (say), to see if it would be immediately proposed for
deletion even though that licence is (of course) a proper superset of
GFDL 1.2 terms.
All of the above remarks also apply equally to LDP, its wiki, and the
"LDP Wiki Default Licence".
> may be it's time for the LDP to make things simple or die.
I'm with Einstein: "Make things as simple as possible but no simpler."
You seem to want a greater degree of simplicity than the reality of
real-world documentation permits -- and, in particular, seem to be in an
awful hurry to decree that LDP should not accept documents under
reasonable free licences that don't meet your standards of simplicity.
The fact is, the Linux community has quite diverse preferences among
well-known free, forkable licences for documentation -- and also
occasional compelling reasons to dual-license. None of that should or
does stand in the way of any legitimate need to enable third-party
maintenance, or any other interest LDP has. All it interferes with is
your desire to make reality more simple than it actually is.
