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Re: Final updates for this Python Policy revision



On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>
>> The policy is under GPL license which is kind of ridiculous to prevent
>> citing Debian Policy in private talks.
>
> Why is it ridiculous? Is it any more ridiculous to put a policy document
> under GPL than any other document?

It is in the same ridiculous for other document. It is ridiculous in
the way people want to hide, skip or complicate things. GPL clearly
doesn't suit "works" that are not binary, nor source code, that are
organized for storage in classic real world libraries. GPL text itself
is rather big for comprehension and when you try to apply it to
documentation it creates too many confusing (philosophical) questions
to be useful.

FSF created GFDL to address this issue, but it was not compatible with DFSG.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL#Use_for_text_and_other_media

> I think that any free-software license that the copyright holders choose
> is fine for this work.

Copyright holders are free to choose anything they want. It may not
even make any sense. The criteria is simple. Can you answer the two
questions below?

1. What am I free to do with with GPL'ed policy text?
2. Are you sure about that?

I can't answer positive about the second one, and I suspect that nobody can.

> Why do you want specific justification for choosing the GPL?

Just because I believe it is chosen blindly. Why do you need policy
license at all? If it is decided to limit the usage of this text - it
can be said more clearly - "attribution required", "commercial usage
is not permitted", "derived works are allowed".

> What specific problems do you see from choosing the GPL for a work, and
> why should those problems concern us in this case?

One specific problem is that nobody understands what do you mean when
releasing something that is not software under GPL. It can simply be
deemed invalid in court and usual copyright rules apply. In this case
it can be sought like the freedom authors choose to express their
opinions about what did they meant later. You do not license for that.

>> What about http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ ?
>
> Are you saying that license preferable to the GPL for this work? How so?

I still have no idea why Policy authors have chosen GPL, but if
everything they meant was that this work requires attribution and
should be distributed under the same license, then CC license says it
way much more clearly.

>> It is compatible with DFSG
>
> As is the GPL.
-- 
anatoly t.


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