discuss: Limits on doc licensing's significance
Subject:
Re: [discuss] Limits on doc licensing's significance
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
2 Oct 2008 00:27:40 +0100
Message-Id: <20081001060616.GD2325@davespc>
On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 03:51:50PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
Note: Rick Moen didn't write this directly to LDP. He sent it to LDP
as a quote of what he wrote to another discussion group. So when I
mention LDP in my comments, I don't mean to imply that Rick Moen
neglected to consider the situation at LDP.
>
> Opinions on documentation licensing tend to be surprisingly contentious
> (and I wasn't even particularly thinking of the Debian vs. GFDL affair);
> many commentators seem to forget about ways in which documentation tends
> to differ fundamentally from software:
I've thought about this topic too but never got around to putting it
in writing.
>
> o Getting access to the preferred form really isn't very difficult for
> a motivated re-user. (We're not talking about contrived DRM/Kindle
> scenarios, but rather ordinary documentation -- but even those succumb
> to screen snapshots and OCR.) At minimum, the full semantics of the
> work are available to inspection, i.e., there's nothing like
> software's trait of obscuring through compilation.
Well, getting access to the source does present a problem since
without source one would have to spend time adding all the needed
LinuxDoc or DocBook tags, for example, in order to covert text into
source.
But the main point is that for software, one can't read the source and
thus can't gain an understanding of how it works. For documentation,
it must have a readable form (otherwise it isn't documentation) and by
reading it one may understand what it says and at least take notes.
So proprietary documentation that can't be copied or modified is not
the disaster that proprietary software is. One can learn a lot by
reading proprietary documentation but proprietary software can't be
read at all. Rick's last sentence says the same thing using the word
"semantics".
> o In part because of the above fact, there's very little barrier to
> creation of a new, equivalent work if an existing one's terms of usage
> become a problem.
There is often a barrier and may take some work to overcome it. If
the work is very outdated, then it isn't much more difficult to start
from scratch and create a new document than it would be to modify the
original. But in other cases perhaps only 10% - 20% of the doc needs
modifying. Then it's going to present a barrier if you have to create
an entire new document instead of just modifying a small part of the
old document. For LDP docs, I think the majority of the ones that are
not being maintained tend to fall into something like the first
category where it would not require too much extra effort to rewrite
them from scratch.
> o The desire to create a new document as a derivative work borrowing part
> of an existing document is relatively rarely felt. (The desire to
> update an existing poorly maintained document occasionally does arise.)
It's not felt much within LDP since most docs allow modification and
also since we don't have enough volunteers. But in general, it's much
better if a doc allows modification, which in a special case could
mean that the original author must approve of the modification or that
if the original author can't be located (or has no time to review a
proposed modification), then one can go ahead and make the
modifications (and distribute the modified doc). Too bad that there
are no licenses like this.
> o For various reasons of real-world perception, authors are often
> concerned that modified variants of their work will make them appear to
> have said something they didn't. Software people tend to assume that
> this is no more of a problem than it is in software, and yet they are
> not correct.
These reasons are more than just perceptions, LDP has had cases of
this situation where someone modifies a doc and wrecks it, making it
look to some that the original author may have done it.
>
> It's often claimed that documentation's licensing must be compatible
> with (if not the same as) that of the software it concerns, e.g., for
> example code included in the docs -- but that's a pretty contrived
> scenario, in my view.
Well, as Stallman implies, if one can modify the software one needs to
be able to modify the documentation to reflect the modifications to
the software.
If something is copyrighted and doesn't allow modification, you can't
just paraphrase each sentence since no derivative works are allowed.
But facts can't be copyrighted. So it's some work creating a new doc.
Once might first read it over and take notes. Then study other docs
on the same topic and add to the notes (or even correct the original
notes). Then organize all this into a new doc which should not follow
the organization of the original doc (or at least not closely). It
should be a significant improvement over the original doc and present
new information. It should give credit to the sources of information
used, including the original doc.
A problem arises if one wants to merge two docs with incompatible
licenses. I don't think this happens very often. But still, it would
be nice for everything on the wiki to use the same license. And what
I think a would be a good license for LDP hasn't been written yet. For
one, I think that a license should not allow people to distribute
stale documentation unless it's labeled as such (or reached by a link
named "archive" or the like). Many out-of-date versions of HOWTOs are
found on the Internet. (I mean out-of-date where a newer version
exists.) Also, the adding of advertising to the doc shouldn't be
allowed, including cases where it's presented in another frame or
pop-up ad, etc. Since the mirror sites don't have ads, there is no
problem with having fewer sites that carry LDP docs if the ones with
ads are banned via the licenses.
David Lawyer
