Re: A radical approach to rewriting the DFSG
Glenn Maynard wrote:
> What about the old Apache license:
>
> 3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution,
> if any, must include the following acknowledgment:
> "This product includes software developed by the
> Apache Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org/)."
> Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself,
> if and wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear.
>
> A lot of other software uses this, eg. Subversion. It has three problems:
> it gives a verbatim text (eg. no translations, can't fix or remove the URL
> if it becomes outdated); requires it in the "end-user documentation", which
> I believe is stronger than the X11 license's "supporting documentation"; and
> it accumulates, if code is used from several projects with this type of clause.
> (The "alternatively" lessens the "end-user documentation" problem, but only if
> there's a place for acknowledgments--there may not be, eg. on embedded devices.)
IMHO, "end-user documentation" refers to any documentation shipped to
the end-user, including /usr/share/doc/*/copyright. As long as the
documentation file is shipped to the user (the INSTALL file wouldn't
work, for example), it should qualify as "end-user documentation". If
the license really required it to appear in a piece of documentation
suitable to show end-users how to operate the software, then the
software would not be distributable at all if no such documentation
existed. I seriously doubt that is the intent of the license.
- Josh Triplett
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