Re: GTK+ Documentation Licence

["J.H.M. Dassen" <jdassen@wi.leidenuniv.nl>]

On Wed, Apr 14, 1999 at 14:13:02 +0100, Damon Chaplin wrote:
> Mel Pullen wrote:
> > What about all of the other documentation projects that offer variations
> > of the GPL ?  DDP, LDP, OPL all serve to protect the users rights.
> 
> Can you give me URLs for these.

DDP: Debian Documentation Project, http://www.debian.org/~elphick/ddp/
LDP: Linux Documentation Project, http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/linux.html
OPL: Open Content license? (http://www.opencontent.org)

> I'd be happier with an open license, but the decision is not mine.
> 
> I think RedHat just want to be sure they don't get into legal trouble when
> publishing the material. If we can provide a watertight open license they
> may accept it.

I think there are two quite orthogonal issues here:
- License under which the documentation is made available
- Ownership of the copyright of the documentation

I'm not going to comment on the first - I'm still not sure what criteria to
use in deciding documentation's (rather than software's) freedom.

As to the second issue, looking at free software, there are two ways in
which continued freedom is promoted
- Assigning copyright to a non-profit organisation that's dedicated to free
  software, like the FSF.
- Keeping copyright with the individual authors. As the group of authors
  continues to increase, the possibility of license changes becomes
  negligible.

Mel's premier objection seems to be against assigning copyright to a
company whose continued dedication to free software cannot be guaranteed.

Ray
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