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Re: Bug#238245: Proposed plan (and license) for the webpage relicensing



On Sat, Apr 22, 2006 at 06:40:11AM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
> > The only change I made to it was substituting "FreeBSD Documentation
> > Project" for "Debian Project".
> 
> You've sent two totally different licenses to the list so far; I was
> refering specifically to the license which was attached to the message
> which I responded to. It should be clear why that particular license
> is not GPL compatible.

The first one was much discussed. The second one was my proposed version
based on that discussion (unfortunately, I did not attach it when I should
have done it)

> Indeed, neither of the two licenses you've sent are just s/FreeBSD
> Documentation/Debian/g; replacements... each of them have contained
> other changes. Making modifications to an existing license has many of
> the same pitfalls that drafting a totally new license does, and it's
> not something that we want to get in the business of doing.[1]

Please review the changes to the *second* proposal:

1- s/FreeBSD/Debian/
2- remove SGML as the sources, since it does not apply to all our
documentation and, moreover, does not apply to the website (sources are 
mostly WML)
3- add HTML as an output
4- remove the limitation of having the license text in the first lines of the
  file
5- add a reference to translations (could be considered a "modification" to
  the source, however they are not in international IP law)

2 and 3 are *technical* changes to notes, they do not affect the license at all.
4 was requested in this list and I do agree that is necessary.
5 was added on my behalf and has no real impact on the license since, in its
absence, a translation would be considered a "modification" of the source.

I don't believe any of these changes introduces any new pitfalls, quite
the contrary, it removes them.

> If this is something that you're woried about, you can just replace
> software with work. Indeed, the GPLv3 does this because there's no
> point in generating confusion amoung people who think that software
> means programs instead of meaning information that is represented in a
> digital fashion. But frankly, it really makes no difference. Everyone
> understands what you're supposed to do when you've got a GPLed work;
> you just include the prefered form for modification. With an MITed
> work there should be no confusion at all.

There is no MITed "work" license, the MIT license explicitly mentions
software too. As for GPLv3, I will not get into details, but I rather not use
that license.

> The FreeBSD documentation license is not compatible with the GPL
> because it has a restriction on modification which the GPL itself does
> not contain. It explicitely requires you to include the license as the
> first lines of the file, unmodified, instead of including them in an
> appropriate location.

And that's precisely what I changed in my second proposal (which should have
been attached to Message-ID: <[🔎] 20060419233743.GA4068@javifsp.no-ip.org>)

Regards

Javier

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