Re: CC-BY : "clarification letter" ?
Jeremy Hankins wrote:
> How about dual licensing? License it under both the GPL (or whatever
> license the software you're documenting uses -- see below) and the
> CC-by.
That's a thought... it's a good thought.
I'll discuss that with the others.
> But if you dual license now, when the time comes that you can switch
> entirely to your preferred license, you quietly drop the CC-by with no
> extra fuss. Switching licenses is *hard* when you have a lot of
> contributors to contact and get approval from.
Well, I do like the CC-BY very much and wouldn't want to drop it. But your
point about dual licensing is still strong.
> As for which other license to use, think about the possibility that you
> will want your license to be compatible with that of the software you
> document. Someone down the road may want to use excerpts from your
> documentation as context help, or something like that. If the licenses
> are incompatible that may not be possible -- at least not without
> jumping some legal hoops.
I hadn't thought of that. I'm glad you mentioned it.
The situation is a tad complicated, but not too much. OpenOffice.org is
dual-licensed (LGPL/SISSL). I wouldn't want the documentation to be triple
licensed. However, I could make it GPL/CC-BY, and that would still work
for GNU/Linux distros. Because OOo has a GPL-compatible license, a distro
could ship OOo plus the docs, all under the GPL.
I like the idea of a dual GPL/CC-BY license. I'll ask our editor what she
thinks. After she and I talk about it, we'll bring this up to the rest of
the gang.
My only concern is that I don't fully understand the implications of using
the GPL for documentation.
Cheers,
--
Daniel Carrera | I don't want it perfect,
Join OOoAuthors today! | I want it Tuesday.
http://oooauthors.org |
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