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



On 19 Apr 2006, Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña uttered the following:

> In summary: The web pages license content should be changed from the
> OPL (non DFSG-free) to some other license (DFSG-free). As it is, the
> current content is not GPL compatible (so it cannot be reused, for
> example, in documentation produced by the DDP project).

        This is also troublesome since we say i the social contract:
    When we write new components of the Debian system, we will license
    them in a manner consistent with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

>
> a) a proper license should be decided for the website.
>
> I suggest using a BSD-style license. The attached license is such a
> license. It is based on the FreeBSD documentation license [3] and
> explicitely mentions translations.  In our case (the website) the
> 'source code' is the wml, but I leave references to other sources
> (SGML, XML) that might apply to other documentation that the website
> might hold.

        I would be willing to license my contributions under the
 GPL.  I do not see why translations are any different than another
 wml file added to the combined work, so I don't see why the GPL is
 not a perfectly good license for the wml code.

>
> b) old contributors to the web site (i.e. all that have had CVS
>    access to the WWW CVS are for the past 10 years) should be
>    contacted and ask to   agree to this license change.


        As long as the licenses used are compatible, we may not need a
 common license. Standard footers can be provided for inclusion for
 each page.

> c) a note should be added to the Debian site (as a News item?)
>    describing the license change (and the reasons for the change)
>    and giving a 6 month  period for comments.

        e are following our social contract.  There need be no
 comments period for six months, we should just get on with it.

> d) new contributors during that period should be asked to agree to
>    the license change and to transfer (c) to SPI (GPG/PGP signed
>    e-mail would be a requisite for contributing, a paper trail would
>    be even best) 

        What reason should people assign copyright if the license is
 free?  I have no intention of doing so, for any past or future
 contributions. 

>
> e) from here on access to the CVS of the website should be given
>    after clearly stating (and getting and agreement) that any and
>    all contributions  to the CVS, unless specified otherwise with
>    clear (c) statements in the  code, will be (c) SPI and will be
>    considered "work under contract"  

        No.  While I am willing to change my license to the GPL, if
 you want work under contract, my contract rate is US $250/hour. And I
 have a boilerplate contract agreement you must sign, in order to use
 my work.

> Does this sound like a reasonable plan? Who can help digging out a
> list of contributors and preparing an explanatory e-mail and license
> change notice for the website?

        The copyright assignment does not sound sane, no.

        manoj
-- 
Don't feed the bats tonight.
Manoj Srivastava   <srivasta@debian.org>  <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C



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