Re: Licence oddity in Securing Debian Manual

[Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>]

Quoting Brian T. Sniffen (bts@alum.mit.edu):

> True.  But I read the phrase "This document... explicit permission" as
> saying that Appendix H has a different copyright-owner, and has been
> separately distributed under the GFDL1.2.  The whole work is under the
> GPL2, as said at the beginning. 

"Securing Debian Manual" authors Alexander Reelsen, Javier
Fernández-Sanguino Peña stated in the front matter that they were
issuing _their_ work under GPLv2 or later.  Whether Mr. Ratti did or not
strikes me as, unfortunately, somewhat ambiguous:  Ironically for that
claim of "explicit permission", _lack_ of explicitness is precisely the
problem:

Did he "explicitly" issue this instance of the inclusion under GPLv2 or
later, under GFDL with a licence exception, or something else?
(something else might not "make sense", to borrow your words, but cannot
be ruled out unless you're willing to take on faith that derivative-work
licensing can be assumed problem-free -- which seems a stretch.  ;->  )

Fortunately, as you point out, clarification from Mr. Ratti should fix
this in a hurry.

-- 
Cheers,                                        "He who hesitates is frost."
Rick Moen                                                 -- Innuit proverb
rick@linuxmafia.com