Re: Clarification of redistribution
Mike Olson <mao@abyssinian.sleepycat.com> writes:
> I've got a follow-up question for the Debian readership on the list:
> What documentation licenses do you know of that are DFSG-free?
The MIT/X11 license, the new BSD license, the Sleepycat license, and
the GPL are all Free documentation licenses. Using the same license
as your software makes it easy to copy examples and code snippets in
one direction, and informative information into comments in the other.
Most copyleft licenses which specify source format or transmission
method in detail have problems for printed documentation -- if the
Emacs manual were under the GPL, every copy printed and sold would
have to contain a copy of the source in machine-readable form -- maybe
a CD in the back? -- or the publisher would have to keep an archive of
source.
That's not a problem for ORA or other huge publishers, but it's a big
problem for a person who just wants to print out a copy and hand it to
a friend, or print a dozen copies of one chapter for a class.
> How do you guys think about marks, and preservation of trademark
> rights in documentation?
By all means put appropriate licenses on your trademarks to protect
them. You probably want to require that anybody who's not you has to
remove them if they modify the document. But please don't do that in
the copyright license. A requirement that the letters "d" and "b" not
be used in proximity would be unpleasant.
-Brian
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
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