Non-free documentation

[Thomas Hofer]

Fabio Massimo Di Nitto wrote: [Sunday 14 November 2004 15:51]
> 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. 

Yes, I was aware of this. My point was that since there's no information 
about licensing available at the webpage, the normal copyright laws 
apply - which say that only the copyright holder has distribution 
rights. That's what I meant with "non-free". A copyright notice doesn't 
conflict with a free license like the GPL, but is its precondition.

> 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. 

I think that licensing of documentation is an often neglected subject.

Thomas.