discuss: Limits on doc licensing's significance
Subject:
Re: [discuss] Limits on doc licensing's significance
From:
jdd ####@####.####
Date:
4 Oct 2008 08:55:13 +0100
Message-Id: <48E72132.2090401@dodin.org>
Rick Moen a écrit :
> You've quibbled here with wording but (slightly vexingly) ignored what I
> actually meant:
please, Rick, your participation *is* invaluable, but you feel often
very easily offended. Don't.
We are, here, on good company, good fellows, all aimed to the same goal.
Of course, we have all a past with some ideas, may be preconceived,
sometime wrong, but I think we are always of good faith.
the problem we are debatting now are *very difficult* and you make a
very good work making it clear, but the light come slowly. I
understand very well how it can be disapointing to have to explain and
explain again (I'm a former teacher :-), but it's usefull.
At least for me, this discussion is very usefull.
> Later, following an idea of Don Marti's (a friend and, at the time,
> technical editor of _Linux Journal_), I appended an "or" clause to
> give what Don calls a "bastard reverse copyleft" alternative: Readers
> _also_ are permitted to "create derivative works of any sort for any
> purpose, provided your versions contain no attribution to me, and that
> you assert your own authorship (and not mine) in every practical medium."
very good phrasing
> That depends on what you mean by "_just_ paraphrase".
If I understand well you mean (and it's pretty obvious, just thinking
about it) that fact being not possible to copyright, sentences
describing simply the fact can't be neither. In (very) short, only the
"humor" of the text, his "style" can't be copied
>> It should give credit to the sources of information
>> used, including the original doc.
>
> Well, that's just good manners. It's not a legal obligation (outside a
> derivative-work scenario where an existing credit must be preserved).
US writers tend to be quite picky on this matter, much less is some
other countries
>
>> A problem arises if one wants to merge two docs with incompatible
>> licenses. I don't think this happens very often.
>
> Can you name even _one_ instance in LDP history of someone _really_,
> seriously wanting and needing to do this?
just a present exemple. Two HOWTOs aiming to howto edit documents have
been written, one with explicit licence (mine), the other without any
(randy's). Strictly speaking it's impossible to merge them, however I
proposed to merge and Randy agreed, it was simply obvious that they
where made in this goal. In most case this is not a problem.
In fact, the main problem I fear is somebody going to Slashdot and
claiming the LDP have stolen his doc. Even if the claim is biased,
even untrue such thing could be very destructive. I have no link on
such things, but suffered from similar problems that nearly killed my
LUG three years ago.
So we need to have a "absolutely clean" LDP.
So better not modify a document with dubtfull licence than risk some
clash (no document should be so important as to risk our reputation).
It's probably better to stay like this now and report here only with
real (LDP) case.
thanks
jdd
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