From owner-freebsd-doc Tue Feb 5 7:27:55 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (pc-62-31-42-140-hy.blueyonder.co.uk [62.31.42.140]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 26F6137B426 for ; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 07:27:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (from nik@localhost) by nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (8.11.6/8.11.6) id g15F0ff85563; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 15:00:41 GMT (envelope-from nik) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 15:00:41 +0000 From: Nik Clayton To: Simon J Mudd Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Documentation licenses - what choices do I have? Message-ID: <20020205150041.B5732@clan.nothing-going-on.org> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-md5; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="Z4ZSWl3cPHKQyRxO" Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i In-Reply-To: ; from sjmudd@pobox.com on Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 11:33:24AM +0100 Organization: FreeBSD Project Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org --Z4ZSWl3cPHKQyRxO Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable [ All IMHO -- this should not be read as an 'official' stance on the=20 license ] On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 11:33:24AM +0100, Simon J Mudd wrote: > What type of license do FreeBSD users recommend for using with FreeBSD an= d=20 > what other options might be appropriate? http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ln16.html =20 > I'm don't want to start up a flame war, I simply don't know where to look= =20 > for a document-licensing-howto so that I can compare the different terms= =20 > and then decide which is right for me. The GNU project has the FDL:=20 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#FDL it also has http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#DocumentationLicenses The LinuxDoc project has some info at: http://www.linuxdoc.org/manifesto.html Personally, I think most of these licenses are a waste of time[1]. Many of them try to bend over backwards to publishers because everyone's got the meme that "One of the way to make money off open source is to write books about it". So you get all sorts of crap in things like the Open Publication License about who can publish it, immutable front matter, and so forth. IMHO, people shouldn't try to weasel around making documentation 'almost free'. And the BSD license is, for me, the best expression of 'freedom' -- almost public domain, but with disclaimed liability. We (I) use the BSD license on the documentation because, IMHO the documentation should be available under the same license as the code. I put "(I)" up there because this isn't something that's really been discussed on this list. IIRC for a long time there was no explicit license on the docs (with the exception of man pages, most of which have the BSD license on them). When I did the LinuxDoc -> DocBook conversion I also put the license on the converted files, which was the first license statement on the FAQ and Handbook. Other documents submitted by other people have followed that trend. But it's not something that's ever been discussed in detail on this list, so there's no 'official' policy. N [1] Originally I wrote 'crock of shit' here :-) --=20 FreeBSD: The Power to Serve http://www.freebsd.org/ (__) FreeBSD Documentation Project http://www.freebsd.org/docproj/ \\\'',) \/ \= ^ --- 15B8 3FFC DDB4 34B0 AA5F 94B7 93A8 0764 2C37 E375 --- .\._/= _) --Z4ZSWl3cPHKQyRxO Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (FreeBSD) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iEYEARECAAYFAjxf85gACgkQk6gHZCw343X6VgCghpEPVn076R43Zzr/vIi8ddX6 xU8AnimRu9+v5omZbSEtZzKdam/YLVAd =Tb2z -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Z4ZSWl3cPHKQyRxO-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message