Re: Rules for submitting licenses for review
Ricardo Gladwell <ricardo.gladwell@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/08/05, Francesco Poli <frx@winstonsmith.info> wrote:
> > But when the question is "is the GFDL a license suitable to release free
> > documentation?" their answer is very different from our... :-(
We don't really have a shared concept of "free documentation" distinct
from "free software" because the whole "how do I tell if this bitstream
is documentation or program" debate is rather painful.
> That's the main reason I came to debian-legal first. If someone could
> point me in the direction of a more appropriate forum I would be most
> grateful.
I wonder if the freeculture.org groups are good for this? You will find
a range of opinions there, but other than the anti-commercial strand,
it's not that different most of the time.
> > We have so *few* DFSG-free non-programs, that I don't consider this as a
> > minor issue...
> > I'm worried about this possible scenario:
> >
> > * a user comes to us seeking for license analysis or recommendation
> > * we tell her "if you are not talking about a Debian (prospective)
> > package, go away"
> > * she finds another 'forum' and follows their analyses and
> > recommendations
> > * sooner or later she becomes an author and writes something useful
> > * she chooses the license based on what she was recommended [...]
Well, if she takes advice from one topic and mindlessly applies
it to another, that's always going to be painful. Other forums
may give bad advice for our use, but we may give bad advice for
other uses.
I don't suggest a blanket "go away" is healthy, but I'm really not
sure what other forums are out there right now.
You write there are few non-program packages. Do you know how few?
> I was hoping to review the Open Game License[1]. Although not a
> software license, it has been used in the popular PCGen software
> application which could, hypothetically, be added to Debian at some
> point.
> [1] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/ogl.html
I think there's a small risk in the COPYRIGHT NOTICE wording
if someone adds adverts in it and there's a half-implementation
of trademark law in it, but I'm not sure it's enough to block a
work under that licence. I don't understand why it needed a new
licence for this.
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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