Re: Is Open Publication License v1.0 compatible?
Henning Makholm wrote:
> | Any publication in standard (paper) book form shall require the
> | citation of the original publisher and author. The publisher and
> | author's names shall appear on all outer surfaces of the book. On
> | all outer surfaces of the book the original publisher's name shall
> | be as large as the title of the work and cited as possessive with
> | respect to the title.
>
> I find this clause non-free, like the similar language in the GFDL.
Other than the requirements about "as large as the title and cited as
possessive", this clause does not seem much different from the old BSD
advertising clause. One requires a short string of text in advertising
materials, and the other requires a short string of text on printed
copies of the work itself. This clause actually seems more free than
the BSD advertising clause, since the advertising clause requires
independent works (advertising materials) not derived from the work in
question to include the string, while the OPL clause only makes a
requirement on the original work and derived works.
(This does not address the question of whether the BSD advertising
clause is considered free, since many on this list have said it is only
DFSG-free because of the grandfather clause.)
> | 2. The person making the modifications must be identified and the
> | modifications dated. -
>
> This seems to fail the Dissident Test.
That depends on the intent of this clause. Since it does not indicate
how the person must be identified, I think this is probably intended to
be a variant on "you must clearly mark your changes as not being part of
the original work". For this purpose, "modifications by Anonymous
Dissident 1" should satisfy the requirement.
If the clause is intended to require a real name or something similar,
it is definitely non-free.
> | The location of the original unmodified document must be identified.
>
> What do we think of this? It seems to prevent any distribution of
> derivate documents if the original has been lost or at least one does
> not know any location where the original can be found.
It doesn't say that the location must still work, so providing the
location where you obtained the document (or if you obtained a modified
version, the location given by that distributor) should be sufficient.
A requirement to continually check that the location worked would
clearly be non-free.
- Josh Triplett
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