Re: Proposal: License Change for Manual And Standardization of Licenses for Official Docs

["Chris Travers" <..hidden..>]

Hi MJ,

Thank you for your comments.


> The FDL is not merely potentially unFree - it's always unFree because
> the current FDL itself must be an invariant section in the work.

I am not sure I understand.  Licenses are generally/usually invariant
anyway, and IMO, should always be included in the work as a whole.
The FDL does not specify that it must be in every *document* but
rather every work (which could span multiple
documents/volumes/formats/etc).  Hence I don't see an issue with
distributing the FDL separately in multi-document works any more than
the idea that the GPL would not need to be distributed inline in every
source file just in case one GPL file was downloaded by itself from a
CVS or SVN repository.

If invariant sections were limited to legal notices, licenses, and
disclaimers, that would be one thing (the BSDL for example must be
reproduced verbatim on any works including covered copyrights), but my
larger concern is that there is always a temptation to start
distributing propaganda with technical documentation (and indeed this
is why invariant sections are allowed in the first place) while
refusing to appropriately label it as non-Free.  When you add cover
texts, this effectively prevents reuse of documentation by other
projects.

>
> > > Or perhaps the Creative Commons?
> >
> > Which Creative Commons license were you thinking?
>
> Creative Commons licenses are complicated and contain lawyerbombs -
> things which are vague and/or confusing and/or CC has ignored requests
> to explain.  I don't see the benefit over a BSD-style documentation
> licence if that's what's wanted.



>
> Some debian manuals are under the GPL.  It is not necessary (ISTR
> lawyers advising that it may even be unhelpful) to specify the
> preferred form for editing, as that may change over time.  A court
> should decide what is reasonable as source code, if really needed.

I am not sure whether I think that GPL'd documentation is a good thing
or not.  Obviously if we can't get the approval of the developers who
have written a lot of the POD, that documentation may need to be
GPL'd, but if publishers want to make money distributing the
documentation, that just means we get free advertising in bookstores.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers