Packaging Guide License

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On 3 Dec, 2005, at 3:50 PM, Jordan Mantha wrote:
>
> Matthew East wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 19:35 -0800, Jordan Mantha wrote:
> ...
>>>    After a discussion with mpt and Madpilot on #ubuntu-doc I have 
>>> become concerned about the license for the Ubuntu Packaging Guide. I 
>>> took the guide from a doc done by Ankur Kotwal for the MOTU. The 
>>> .deb package has a GPL license so assume that the doc is GPL'd. This 
>>> means that the Ubuntu Packaging Guide needs to be GPL'd. I believe 
>>> that it was GPL'd because it includes quite  a bit of material from 
>>> the Debian New Maintainer's Guide. However, it also had quite a bit 
>>> from the Ubuntu wiki (which is not GPL ?). At this point I am 
>>> wondering what the best way to go is.

I'm not a lawyer, but this seems fairly simple:
1.  stop distributing the Ubuntu Packaging Guide, for as long as you
     cannot legally do so;
2.  contact each contributor to the relevant wiki pages and ask them to
     license their contributions under the GPL;
3.  remove all material for which step 2 was unsuccessful;
4.  resume distributing the Guide.

>>> Can the Ubuntu Packaging Guide be GPL'd considering the wiki 
>>> content? Should the whole thing be rewritten? I am not opposed to 
>>> that but it would be some work.
>>
>> No, I think that is absolutely fine. The wiki is a free for all 
>> (IMO). I think the GPL makes sense. We're working on making the wiki 
>> licence a bit clearer: see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WikiLicensing

Smokey, you're about to enter a world of pain. Here's the proposed 
license from that page:
>
> You are free:
>
>  * to copy, modify, distribute, display and make commercial use of 
> material which you find on this wiki
>
> Under the following conditions:
>
>  * You must identify that the material came from the Ubuntu wiki, and 
> provide a URL to the wiki.
>  * If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may 
> distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this 
> one.
>  * For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the 
> licence terms of this work.

This license would make wiki material unnecessarily difficult to use 
for Ubuntu derivatives, and would continue to make it unusable for all 
other Documentation Team work.

*   It wouldn't be usable in documents licensed under the GNU GPL,
     because the advertising clause is incompatible with the GPL (cf.
     <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html>). So the problem with the
     Ubuntu Packaging Guide could happen again.

*   It wouldn't be usable in documents licensed under the GNU FDL,
     because while the first and third license conditions appear to be
     compatible with the FDL, the second condition clashes with the
     FDL's requirement to "Include an unaltered copy of this License".

*   It wouldn't be usable in documents licensed under the CC BY-SA,
     for an equivalent reason as for the FDL.

*   Every single page on the Edubuntu wiki would be in violation of the
     license, because the Edubuntu wiki is a mirror of the Ubuntu wiki,
     but it doesn't display the URL of the Ubuntu wiki. This could be
     fixed, but it would look silly.

I think the simplest way to make wiki material easily usable in all of 
these situations would be to require wiki contributors to release all 
new contributions under the public domain.

> ...
> I might be showing my lack of licensing knowledge here but doesn't a 
> lack of license mean that it cannot be used since a license would 
> describe circumstances where you can take material not when you can't.

Indeed. As I understand it, if contributors don't accept their work 
being put under any particular license (like there is when you edit a 
Wikipedia page, for example), everyone has a copyright on their own 
contributions, and nobody can be assumed to have given permission for 
their contributions to be used anywhere other than the wiki. So without 
explicit permission from the relevant contributors, you can't put stuff 
from the wiki into any other documents, no matter *what* license those 
other documents are under.

> I think that this was bounced around some time ago for the wiki and 
> forums perhaps (I can't remember right now). I am fine with GPLing the 
> Packaging Guide but it seems like that would be sort of going against 
> the flow of using dual GFDL and CC-BY-SA license.
> ...

If it was derived from a GPLed document, you have no choice but to keep 
it GPLed, unless you get permission from all the previous contributors.

So how do we get out of this mess? I suggest:
1.  Hack the Ubuntu wiki so that Moin knows, for each page, whether it
     is copyright or public domain (even after renaming). All existing
     pages are copyright, because you can't change them retrospectively.
2.  Put text in the wiki editing form such that contributors accept
     their work is under the public domain.
3.  Flip the switch so Moin recognizes that all new pages are under the
     public domain.
That way, you still won't be able to use the majority of the wiki in 
other documents, but the proportion you *can* use will steadily 
increase over time.

-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/