discuss: Thread: The Debian-Jigdo HOWTO

For archival purposes, this is what Peter Jay Salzman has to say about
his HOWTO.  He's willing to have it GFDL'd on condition that he
maintains final veto over any changes to the 'official' documentation.
 Can we do this or will he have to pick another license?

Borden

On 05/01/2009, Peter Jay Salzman ####@####.#### wrote:
> Hi Borden,
>
> You're doing good work.  Thanks for doing this.
>
> 0. I am the author of the Debian-jigdo howto.
>
> 1. I would like to maintain the published the published document.
>
> 2. I would like for others to be able to edit the document, as long as I
> maintain final editorial control (e.g. if someone starts putting
> objectionable or irrelevent material in the document, I want the authority
> to remove the edits.  I would also like the authority to fix spelling and
> grammar).  A wiki sounds like a perfect medium for that.
>
> 3. IANAL, but as long as I retain final editorial control of the document,
> I'm happy with the license if you are.  I understand that someone can fork
> my work and release it under a different name.  I'm fine with that.
> If you're happy with the license, and I have final editorial authority (with
> the provisio that anyone can create a derivative work), go ahead and change
> the license.
>
> 4. Yes.  Sounds great.
>
> 5. If you have a banner icon for webpages, I'll display it on www.dirac.org.
>
> Thanks for doing this.
>
> Pete
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun 04 Jan 09,  3:41 PM, Borden Rhodes ####@####.#### said:
>> Good afternoon, Peter,
>> I am a reviewer for and supporter of TLDP. We are currently trying to
>> determine the status of all the documents in TLDP's repository. Many
>> pages there are outdated, and we hope to update and improve them. In
>> order to achieve that, the current TLDP staff (including myself)
>> collect information about the documents (HOWTOs, articles, and
>> others).
>> According to TLDP documents, you are the author of the Debian-Jigdo HOWTO.
>> Could you please answer the following questions?
>> 1. Would you like to maintain your published document?
>> 2. Would you like your document to be editable by others? We set up
>> our wiki to make possible that scenario, in hopes of attracting more
>> people to support, maintain, and update pages there.
>> 3. Do you agree your HOWTO being copied to the wiki WITH the new
>> default TLDP Licence, http://wiki.tldp.org/LdpWikiDefaultLicence? (It
>> is GFDL v. 1.2 without invariant sections.) You can find TLDP's wiki
>> at wiki.tldp.org. The GFDL enjoys widespread use for documentation.
>> You can find a reference copy at
>> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.2-standalone.html .
>> 4. Do you agree to your HOWTO being managed via the wiki (controlling
>> the editing process, releasing versions for deployment to the static
>> mirrored pages)?
>> And a personal request, since we have limited resources, very limited,
>> I would remark: We need every help available in spreading the idea of
>> and information about TLDP. I would like to ask for your support and
>> help. Tell others, and spread the news of and information about TLDP
>> and our new project - TLDP wiki.
>> You could find TLDP's wiki at wiki.tldp.org, Also a discussion for the
>> new TLDP manifesto - http://wiki.tldp.org/WikiManifesto And the
>> Getting Involved page -
>> http://wiki.tldp.org/Rewriting%20Manifesto/GettingInvolved
>> Thank you in advance.
>> Borden Rhodes
>
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> "A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee    ####@####.####
>  into theorems."     -- Paul Erdös                     http://www.dirac.org
>

Quoting Borden Rhodes ####@####.####

> For archival purposes, this is what Peter Jay Salzman has to say about
> his HOWTO.  He's willing to have it GFDL'd on condition that he
> maintains final veto over any changes to the 'official' documentation.
>  Can we do this or will he have to pick another license?

Hi, Peter (cc'd).

I should mention that I know Peter.  Also, I'm very sympathetic to his
concern:  It's a difficult thing, to be asked to grant permission that
would authorise third parties to create & distribute screwed-up variants
of one's creations.  For many of my own writings, I'm not willing, for
that very reason.

So, in effect, Peter grants permission for a GFDL 1.2 _fork_ of his HOWTO,
under some different title, and impliedly maintained by others.  He
is not willing to apply GFDL to the extant HOWTO.

That is generous of Peter.  Truly.  It is not, however, a grant of
permission as to the current document.  "Maintain final editorial control"
or "open source"; you can have either one, but not both.


I notice that Peter specifies Lawrence Rosen's OSL v. 1.1 terms for the
head version (2005-12-05 ver 1.8).  Probably earlier releases, too; I'm
just trying to be specific.  The "assent" clause of that licence is
problematic.  (It's equally problematic in the current OSL 3.0 version,
so just suggesting Peter update his licence won't suffice.)


If LDP wishes to maintain a GFDL fork of Peter's Debian Jigdo HOWTO, it
now has the right to do so, prospectively.  The obvious way is to rename
LDP's copy of the current 1.8 text to "Debian Jigdo LDP HOWTO", put
under the copyright notice a gracious note thanking the author for
permitting this persistent fork for licensing reasons, hyperlinking to
http://dirac.org/linux/debian/jigdo/ as the upstream text, and
clarifying that this fork's text may differ from the original author's.

LDP would then need to contemplate the need, going forward, to
periodically notice and merge changes from upstream, if any.  Debian
Jigdo HOWTO strikes me, however, as a mature document, so that is
probably a non-issue.

-- 
Cheers,              Crypto lets someone say "Hi! I absolutely definitely have 
Rick Moen            a name somewhat like the name of a large familiar 
####@####.####  organization, and I'd like to steal your data!" and lots 
McQ!  (4x80)         of users will say "OK, fine, whatever."    -- John Levine 

Hi, Peter.  Just to be clear, I'm not making any decisions for LDP, or
even for the most part expressing opinions; I'm just letting them know
what's feasible.

Quoting Peter Jay Salzman ####@####.####

> Just out of curiosity, if the HOWTO were to be placed on the GFDL and put on
> a wiki(?) how do content/stylistic differences get resolved?  

Beats the heck out of me, really.  

To further clarify, I personally am no fan of GFDL, and prefer to
avoid it for anything I create.  Some of my copylefted writings are
CC-SA 3.0, some are GPLv2, some are both, some are OPL 1.0 with no
options, and http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/ is available under your 
choice of either proprietary terms or a permissive licence where you 
assert authorship.  None is GDFL, which I think is not a good licence.

> For example, if someone were to erase my list of thank-yous and I
> wanted to put them back in, how would that get resolved?

Well, preferably, through courtesy and people not wanting to get a
reputation as being asshats.  ;->

One of the consequences of open source is that it's possible and lawful
for others to abuse _variants_ of your creations (that you have allowed
to be available and redistributed under an open source licence) in a
variety of asshat manners.  Some asshat behaviour is unlawful for legal
reasons not confined to mere copyright violation.  E.g., expunging
author credit tends to commit business torts (and can be curbed through
legal force).

Other asshat behaviour doesn't, within reason, have legal remedies, only
cultural and social ones.

And, believe me, as I said, I'm very much in sympathy with your desire to
make sure a downstream version not to your liking (e.g., a document
stripped of the list of thank-yous) doesn't go around with your name on
it.

####@####.#### a écrit :

(I add the Peter e-mail as recipient, because I don't know is he is
subscribed)

Hello :-)

Thanks to all for your help :-). I will try to clarify what I think
can be the LDP position on such problems.

>> 0. I am the author of the Debian-jigdo howto.

We are always glad to read LDP authors :-)

>>
>> 1. I would like to maintain the published document.

even more if they are still active and maintaining they document :-)

>> 2. I would like for others to be able to edit the document, as long as I
>> maintain final editorial control (e.g. if someone starts putting
>> objectionable or irrelevent material in the document, I want the authority
>> to remove the edits.  I would also like the authority to fix spelling and
>> grammar).  A wiki sounds like a perfect medium for that.

There are several things in this paragraph.

* you are not at all obliged to put your HOWTO on the wiki. This is
important. You can maintain your HOWTO as usual. But of course you
don't have the users help benefits;

* We ask for a licence mainly to address the situation where the
author is no more reachable (very frequent, alas), to make the HOWTO
able to live. Any of these licences are acceptable:
http://wiki.tldp.org/LdpWikiDefaultLicence, we can even accept special
licence after discussion here.

* From the wiki, there are in fact two version of the HOWTO: the wiki
version (quoted as "last one", "alpha" or "beta" one), not mirrored
and IMHO potentially containing errors, and the final "static" version
on the tldp.org Web site, hopefully controlled.

I mean I hope a HOWTO will never be copied to the static part without
at least some sort of verification, if possible by a competent author.
This seems to fit precisely your preoccupations. In fact this is where
I see the LDP different from most present web site: the doc is
checked! I plan to wait for the author to ask us to publish the wiki
before doing so. He can also publish it himself (render to docbook and
submit the docbook document as usual)

* So you can convert the HOWTO to the wiki and still the final
static/mirrored version will be yours. This don't prevent others to
make a fork, but the LDP wont as long as you are here;

* you can also ask to be the only one to have writing rights on the
wiki page. Right now, there is a verbatim copy, unmodifiable here:
http://wiki.tldp.org/Debian-Jigdo. As you may see it's still possible
for users to write on the dicussion page. Of course this is not as
friendly. Users edit often for very small typos or ortograph fixes
that don't fit easily in a discussion page.

thanks again
jdd


-- 
jdd for the Linux Documentation Project
http://wiki.tldp.org
http://www.dodin.net
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Peter Jay Salzman a écrit :

> idea.  Please sign me up, with a public editable wiki and let me know how I
> can transfer the alpha version to the static docbook version, and if we need
> to make a license change, the GPLv3 sounds good to me.

I did the basic work here:

http://wiki.tldp.org/Debian-Jigdo

and began a doc here:

http://wiki.tldp.org/Converting-a-HOWTO

You can insert the licence yourself (or I can do - the first who have
time do :-)

thanks
jdd
-- 
jdd for the Linux Documentation Project
http://wiki.tldp.org
http://www.dodin.net
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