Re: Acceptability of a documentation license for Debian
On Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 02:43:34PM -0400, Jeffrey H. Johnson wrote:
(IANAL, IANFTPM (I am not ftp master), etc.)
I hope you can really find a way to use a standard license. License profiliration
is really becoming harmful to FOSS.
ENOTIME for a complete reply to your mail, but two remarks:
(...)
> 5. As state above, there is concern at the phrasing of "the Software" as
> used in these licenses (such as zlib), when applied strictly to
> documentation. We do not want misunderstandings or confusion that the
> documentation is the simulator software, bundled utilities that the
> documentation describes but are differently licensed, etc. I do
> understand there are subtleties as to exactly what is documentation and
> what is not, and the licenses such as zlib further exacerbate this issue
> by making an implied distinction between the documentation and the
> software, for example: "Permission is granted to anyone to use this
> software ..." and later "an acknowledgment in the product documentation
> would be appreciated". This is especially confusing when the
> documentation IS 'the software', and provides room for argument over the
> resulting compiled documentation output (PDF, etc.).
Regarding Documentation and Software.
I've put some FreeCAD files under the GPL and had the same concern that some
work / 3d model might not be covered. I've solved this for me by writing "For
the avoidance of doubt, "program" can be replaced with "work" in the license
grant above." below the GPL boilerplate in the README. Dont know if that
is legally watertight, but in conveys what I want to archieve.
> 6. Originally, the GFDL was discussed, but it is my understanding the the
> GFDL is still controversial within Debian, and I would like to avoid the
> situation where an optional dps8m-docs package would not be eligible for
> inclusion, because having the simulator available in Debian is a personal
> goal. There are also other problems with the GFDL regarding DRM
> distribution, etc.
nope, GFDL and DFSG is settled.
https://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses#Exception
As long as there are no invariant sections GFDL is acceptable.
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