[Fwd: Re: Developemnt and use - Training manual]

[Blaise Alleyne]

Scott Kitterman wrote:

> On Friday 25 April 2008 10:15, Neal McBurnett wrote:
>   
>> On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 11:53:24AM +0300, Billy Cina wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> The purpose of the license is to prevent the material being used for
>>> profit-seeking purposes. If you (or anyone else) is from a not-for-profit
>>> institution or running community classes etc., then this material is 100%
>>> intended for that. Charging students minimal fees to cover expenses is
>>> also ok.
>>>       

I'm not so sure that charging fees is alright. That seems to be a grey 
area for Creative Commons Non-Commercial licenses, from what I've read. 
It's not clear whether not-for-profit use that involves money transfer 
is commercial or not.

Creative Commons does not define commercial use, so this is very unclear.

>> <snip/>
>>
>> E.g. I would love to see big enterprise users using this for training
>> their people, even though it would be for-profit.  And I would love
>> for them to base their products on Ubuntu (e.g. a point-of-sale
>> product) and use this to train their customers in how to use Ubuntu,
>> even though they would charge for that training.
>>
>> The point is they would still have to share modifications, and we
>> would all benefit - both the training community, and the whole Ubuntu
>> user and developer community - because it would be essentially a
>> win-win-win.
>>     
>
> If this were packaged for inclusion in Ubuntu it would have to go into 
> Multiverse because it does not carry a free license.  It seems rather counter 
> productive to license training materials more restrictively than the 
> distribution.
>
>   

I agree. What's wrong with commercial use anyways? Doesn't commercial 
use help further the goals of Ubuntu? A Creative Commons Non-Commercial 
license is decidedly *not* like the GPL, because you can't make a profit 
from any changes you make, services you provide, work you do, etc.

The Definition of Free Cultural Works [1], modelled after the free 
software definition, clearly allows for commercial reuse, just like the 
definition of free software. A non-commercial license is non-free.

What's wrong with adopting a free license for a free software training 
guide?

A Creative Commons BY-SA license, or the GNU Free Documentation license 
would be much more appropriate.

[1] http://freedomdefined.org