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Re: Open Publication License / GPL / FDL



On Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:11:34 -0700 Geoffroy wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> We are a group of french debian users about to open a new web site. We
> have in mind to translate debaday's articles and possibly some others
> articles related to debian. Our concern is to use the proper license
> but also to have compatibility whit GPL and avoid FDL.

Hi!
I really appreciate your goals: avoiding GFDL and having
GPL-compatibility.

> 
> I know about the issue concerning the DFSG and GNU/FDL, but my english
> is pretty weak and I don't fully understand it.

Unfortunately, this is an English-speaking list and my French does *not*
go beyond a few tourist-like sentences: consequently I cannot help you
in understanding the issues of the GFDL, unless you can read and
understand English (or Italian...).

> Anyway I want to know
> if the Open Publication License (OPL) use for debian.org is GPL
> compatible. Is a document cover by OPL suitable with GPL, providing
> that it is still under OPL ?

Unfortunately the OPL is *not* GPLv2-compatible (nor GPLv3-compatible,
I would say).
Worse than that, works (solely) released under the terms of the OPL do
not even comply with the DFSG.
This is a known issue of the entire Debian Project website, and a really
hard one to solve, since there are many different copyright holders for
it.

Please see  http://bugs.debian.org/238245  for further details.


As far as debaday is concerned, the blog administrators unfortunately
chose to adopt the same license as the Debian website, that is to say
the OPL.  As a consequence, debaday shares the same DFSG-freeness issues
as the Debian website.
I contacted them some time ago and pointed the problem out to them, but
unfortunately they do not seem to have done anything about it yet...


The usual disclaimers: IANAL, TINLA, IANADD, TINASOTODP.


-- 
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..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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