Non-free documentation [was: Re: Ubuntu Traffic #11 -- 2004/11/05]

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto]

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Thomas Hofer wrote:
| Benj. Mako Hill wrote: [Saturday 13 November 2004 06:46]
|
|>Ubuntu Traffic is a newsletter summarizing the goings-on in the
|>Ubuntu community -- focusing on IRC and mailing list activity.
|
|
| First I'd like to say that UT and other, unrelated "Traffics" are very
| useful services that give great insight into the various projects, even
| to a casual observer.
|
| The footer of the Ubuntu Traffic page says: "Ubuntu Traffic is created
| and produced by Canonical Ltd. All pages are copyright Canonical."
|
| I'm a bit disappointed that the UT is non-free - in contrast to the very
| similar looking project "Kernel Traffic", which is licensed under the
| GPL.

I think this is a common misconception. A copyright is not a license.

For example I hold copyright on some patches I did for certain packages, but
i release them with GPL or whatever licence is more appropriate to help redistribution
of the code. I guess the same applies to documentation as well.
Also iirc there was an ongoing discussion to decide whatever licence to apply
to the documentation, but i don't remember if a decision was made or not.

Here is the head of the linux kernel copyright/licence file that gives an idea of
what I mean:

****************************************************************************

~   NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel
~ services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use
~ of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
~ Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software
~ Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the Linux
~ kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.

~ Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel
~ is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not
~ v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.

~                        Linus Torvalds

- ----------------------------------------

~                    GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
~                       Version 2, June 1991

[SNIP]

Fabio

- --
Self-Service law:
The last available dish of the food you have decided to eat, will be
inevitably taken from the person in front of you.
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