On Sat, 8 Sep 2012 11:51:57 +0100 Justin B Rye wrote:
> Francesco Poli wrote:
> >> Once I'm sure
> >> I've got it I'll make sure it's also documented on
> >> "http://wiki.debian.org/Glossary"; (unless someone else gets there
> >> first).
> >
> > I am not sure that those names fit really well in that glossary (which
> > seems to be much more end-user oriented)...
>
> It's oriented towards explaining jargon to people who don't already
> know what it means. There needs to be some such documentation
> *somewhere* or the apt-listbugs man page is just going to have to say
> "-S: secret voodoo option".
In my humble opinion, apt-listbugs should not expose those "pending
state" names to its users (I hope I will manage to fix this flaw in the
future) and the BTS SOAP interface should be documented on a dedicated
page for interested developers.
But I have already elaborated on this in
https://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-english/2012/09/msg00050.html
so I won't repeat myself here...
>
> > Anyway, I see that the Glossary is a license-less wiki page.
> > As you surely know, this defaults to "All rights reserved" under the
> > current unfortunate copyright laws.
>
> I thought I was vaguely remembering a license pointer on the Wiki's
> front page (after all, I've never seen a paper dictionary with a
> prominent copyright statement on *every single page*), but now I see
> the trail leading to http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki/LicencingTerms
> is a dead end.
I am well aware of this mess.
As you can see, the very page you cited links to bug #385797, which I
commented back in 2008:
http://bugs.debian.org/385797#17
And it also links to "A reply to the first reference on -legal"
which is a message I wrote in 2005:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/10/msg00001.html
Unfortunately, I was not listened to, at the time. :-(
That's why I am trying to at least fix the licensing of individual
useful wiki pages, whenever I stumble upon one of them...
I think that the Glossary is a useful page, so I am sad to see that it
is not clearly DFSG-free.
> Still, I'm not convinced that sourcecode-centric
> licenses like the GPL make sense for things like wikis, since the
> Moin-syntax "preferred form for modification" isn't what people are
> going to want to copy.
That's a common misconception.
I am hesitant about diving into a long explanation, because I am afraid
it would drive the discussion far away into off-topic territory for this
list.
So, to cut a long story short: availability of source code is crucial
for any kind of Free Work (even when the license does not mandate this
availability), but the source code definition ("preferred form for
making modifications") is flexible enough to allow it to change form,
whenever people with different preferences actually modify the work
(hence, the GPL will *not* force a document that is born as a wiki page
to forever have wiki-code as its source).
>
> > I would be grateful, if you could get in touch with all the copyright
> > holders for this useful wiki page and ask them to agree to license it
> > in a DFSG-free manner.
>
> That's not going to happen. Much of that page was re-written by me
> last year, but it's based on material from all over the place - early
> contributors had copied most of its entries from other existing
> acronym lists. Even http://wiki.debian.org/WhyTheName has too many
> contributors by now for it to do any good trying to chase them.
That's really unfortunate.
You are basically saying that the Glossary is made up of material
copied from various places either without permission or with untracked
(and possibly mutually incompatible) licenses.
And that the situation is now such a mess that it cannot be fixed with
a reasonable effort.
Avoiding such dead ends is the main reason why one should always pay
attention to copyright and licensing aspects from the very beginning of
each new project...
>
> If you want to fix this, wouldn't it make more sense to start with the
> wiki's new page templates?
As I said above, I tried to help preventing this wiki licensing mess
from happening when it was the right time to dodge the catastrophe.
And other people agreed with me.
But we were not listened to, unfortunately.
The above cited http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki/LicencingTerms
already lists a number of technically feasible suggestions to clarify
the copyright and licensing status of each wiki page (at least of newly
created ones).
It seems that wiki.d.o administrators do not want to listen... :-(
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..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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