Re: documentation for novice and newbies
On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 04:21:55PM -0500, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 03:46:11PM -0500, hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 12:07:59PM -0500, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> > > On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 10:59:09AM -0500, hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> > > > possibly the LGPL or the WxWindows leicence to make it easier for
> > > > producers of other software to incorporate some or all of our
> > > > documentation, possibly in file formats not yet conceived of.
> > > >
> > > How would the GPL v2 prevent others from incorporating some or all of
> > > our documentation, in any file format, as long as they include the GPL
> > > v2 statement for all our stuff, even if what _they_ write is under a
> > > different licence?
> >
> > Some of their stuff might be executable code, and our stuff might be
> > embedded in strings within a code library.
> >
>
> Is this likely? If so, why isn't the rest of debian documentation under
> the GLPL?
>
> Swing this around: Would the GLPL allow others to do something that we
> may not want them to do?
>
> Are you suggesting, for example, if we end up generating a
> commentary for the installation manual, that debian-installer may want
> to add our commentary to a tool-tip pop-up and the GPL wouldn't allow
> that? I think we would _want_ to allow that.
It probably would allow it if the debian-installer were licenced under
the GPL. It might not if it were proprietary (perhaps as part of a
debisn-derived distribution) or if it were under a different free
licence. People are already worried about compatibility between GPL3
and GPL2, for example. There might be other worries with reasonable
licenses we haven't dreamed of.
Having the docs in a contagion-free version of the GPL might be good. I
think there is one.
I suspect the distinction between code and data is going to continue
becoming unclear in the next decade.
-- hendrik
Reply to: