Re: But where do we stand on OPL?

["Mr. Poet" <poet@linuxports.com>]

>From the Document Conventions:

LDP documents must be freely redistributable without fees paid to the
authors. It is not required that the text be modifiable, but it is
encouraged. You can come up with your own license terms that satisfy this
constraint, or you can use a previously prepared license. The LDP provides
a boilerplate license that you can use, some people like to use the GPL,
and others write their own. 

The copyright for each manual should be in the name(s) of the contributing
author(s) for the project. ``The Linux Documentation Project'' isn't a
formal entity and shouldn't be used to copyright the docs. 


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On 19 Sep 1999, Gary Lawrence Murphy wrote:

> >>>>> "L" == Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi> writes:
> 
>     L> Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@canada.com>:
>     >> What is the stance of the LDP on the open publishing licence?
> 
>     L> Yet another licensing debate...
>     L> If it can't be distributed freely, on whatever medium, it
>     L> doesn't belong in the LDP. That is not negotiable.
> 
> Last year, all of the publishers would have said OPL was absurd and
> was not negotiable, and Tim's editorial on ora.com he is quite firm in
> his view of the business model for free docs being pure madness.  It's
> unfortunate that they are willing to go half way, while we are not
> willing to accomodate them, but it is not the end of the world.
> 
> It's not unprecidented. The FSF has the same rule on all software and
> docs, and it does quite well without restricted contributions.  Since
> this appears to be a sensitive issue, I won't trouble you about it.
> 
> I am a little confused, though.
> 
> On this one point of distribution, LDP has a GPL-like policy, but in a
> previous email Poet states
> 
>     p> You CAN restrict people. You just can't CHARGE people.
> 
> and in another, Guylhem writes
> 
>     g> We asked RMS to write a DGPL, it will be ready in a near
>     g> future.
> 
>     g> I think we should prefer it to any other license.
> 
>     g> However, each author would be free to choose *any* other license,
>     g> we could just recommand DGPL.
> 
>     (emphasis is mine)
> 
> Both these statements imply allowing arbitrary restrictions on
> authorship, ownership, editorial changes or whatever, and both are
> consistent with an OPL-B licence; both also allow licences which
> _are_ in violation of a GPL-like policy and would likely be nixed by
> RMS.  I don't mean to be a pest, I just want to understand the LDP
> policy so I don't get caught making promises I can't keep. Where _do_
> we draw the line?
> 
> -- 
> Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@canada.com>  TeleDynamics Communications Inc
> Business Telecom Services : Internet Consulting : http://www.teledyn.com
> Linux Writers Workshop Archive: http://www.egroups.com/group/linux-hack/
> "You don't play what you know; you play what you hear." -- (Miles Davis)
> 
> 
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