Licensing

[Matthew East]

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Hi,

* Jeff Schering:
> On 8/7/06, Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> Another thing, those appendices are pretty ugly, do we really need to
>> reproduce each licence in an appendix like that? How about if we shipped
>> them with the system as articles and linked to them from the "About this
>> document" page? I'll take a look to see if this is appropriate legally
>> speaking. What do people think?
>>
> 
> I'm not a lawyer, but I did go through the FDL and found that we might
> be able to link to the FDL instead of including it.
> 
> I might have missed something, but I found nowhere in the document
> where it explicity declared that a copy of the FDL must be included
> with a new, original work. Including the document is only implied in
> the "ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents" section
> where sample copyright notices are given.
> 
> So it appears that we can link to the FDL provided that the document
> is entirely original.

Yes, I don't see why we shouldn't broadcast the conditions that we want
on our content in whichever way we please. I think it would be nice to
ship a version of the license with the system, to have an onboard link
(as opposed on an online one), but I don't see why the license should be
included in full in the documents.

> However, if the document is distributed by someone other than the
> copyright holder, or modifications to the document are made, then a
> copy of the FDL must be included. (section H in the "GNU FDL
> Modification Conditions" says: "Include an unaltered copy of this
> License."
> 
> I think if there is no GFDL text in the document from other sources,
> then we can simply print the copyright notice and link to the FDL,
> should we choose to release under the FDL.
> 
> My personal preference is to not use the FDL at all, and to instead
> use a liberal, non-viral license that permits the re-use of text
> provided that credit is given to Ubuntu Docteam in some manner, along
> with the list of contributors to the document. This will allow for the
> distribution of docteam docs by third party publishers, possibly for a
> fee, much the same way that hard copy docs are currently distributed
> by lulu.com. I think the more the docs get around the better, and
> therefore we need a liberal license.

Ok, this is a different issue, which licenses should we use. I've added
both of these issues to the agenda for the next meeting, so let's
discuss as much as possible here and then decide at the meeting.

I agree that there is nothing wrong with third party publishers using
the material commercially, however I think we should impose a
share-alike condition, that derivative works remain under the same (or
other?) free license.

I think the CC-BY-SA works fine. Using an existing license also means
that we get the benefit of much hard work gone into testing the license.
A single license would also mean that we can use other compatible
material (hopefully the wiki licensing will be sorted out and it is
possible it will use something similar, and the forum uses this license
too).

> Also, do we need to make sure all documents are released under an
> identical licensing scheme? Maybe we can look at the license on a
> document-by-document basis. We already have the style guide in the
> public domain, and others could follow.

I'm not against this, although it's simpler if we have a standard one,
and deviate only when we feel it is important, such as was done for the
styleguide.

> In future, I think that when you join the docteam, you should agree
> that any words you write for it become the property of the docteam.
> That way, the docteam can, as a team in its normal decision-making
> process, make changes to the licensing of its docs without requiring
> permissions from those who donated the words. But that's just my
> opinion.

Sounds very sensible.

Matt
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