Re: (DRAFT) FAQ on documentation licensing
O Xoves, 14 de Abril de 2005 ás 01:22:56 +0200, Francesco Poli escribía:
> > A: The DFSG is a set of minimum criteria that are taken into account
> > when
> > deciding if a particular copyright license is free or not.
> I would prefer "if a particular /work/ is free or not."
Actually, it would be a mix of both: "if a particular work, with its
copyright license, is free or not".
> > [...] the existence of different DFSG and DFDG would mean that there are
> > some freedoms that are necessary for programs but are irrelevant for
> > documents, and vice versa [...]
> I would add "Nobody has yet provided a convincing rationale to explain
> *why* programs and documents should need a different minimum set of
> freedoms. The Debian project claims that the same freedoms are important
> for both programs and documents."
Agreed; I intended to add something like this all along, but I finally
forgot it. Thanks for adding it :-)
> > A: First, standards documents should be modifiable: that's how old
> > standards are improved and new standards are made. Modifying a copy of
> > a standards document, such as a RFC, does not modify the RFC itself.
> [...] they fail to see the difference between creating a derivative work
> and modifying the work itself [...]
I'll add "; it just creates a new work, derivative of the original RFC" to
the sentence, since the "derivative work" bit is important :-)
> Perhaps it's better avoiding recommending trademarks or otherwise we
> should be prepared to see more and more Mozilla-like mess in the
> future... :-(
Mmmm, you are right. I'll delete the comment about trademark laws (will
leave the reference to libel), but they will eventually have to be
mentioned, since I believe that they're the ones to be used for protecting
the reputation of the authors/of the original works, etc., etc., not a
clause in the copyright license.
But while the implications of using trademark law for this are not fully
explored by us and put into writing, perhaps they're best left out of this
FAQ...
(I was going to remove "slander", since "slander" is speech and "libel" is
writing, but perhaps someone would modify a voice recording just to prove me
wrong, so... ;-)).
> [Comment] Good example. My favorite one is the following: if the license
> of a MUA forbade to add HTML mail support (because the authors are
> philosophically against HTML mail), this license would be considered
> non-free, even when it would be protecting the authors' own opinions.
This is even a better example than mine. I'll change mine to this (the old
one is kept saved in the page's [1] history).
==
[1] http://jacobo.tarrio.org/Documentation_licensing_FAQ
--
Jacobo Tarrío | http://jacobo.tarrio.org/
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