Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 15:00:41 +0000 From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> To: Simon J Mudd <sjmudd@pobox.com> Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Documentation licenses - what choices do I have? Message-ID: <20020205150041.B5732@clan.nothing-going-on.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0202051119450.10258-100000@phoenix.ea4els.ampr.org>; from sjmudd@pobox.com on Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 11:33:24AM %2B0100 References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0202051119450.10258-100000@phoenix.ea4els.ampr.org>
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[ 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/ \\\'',)
\/ \=
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