correcting a translation, i wonder about the following:
You'll find that the PDL is a surprisingly restrictive and burdensome license. :-(
a competing license is GNU/FDL, which in my understanding is considered less free (for example is not considered Free by Debian)
The only reason why we have been using it is because it was the only license OOo would allow for documentation. To pick anything else would mean that the files could not go to the OOo website.
yes, i know this
http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/PDL.html
Go to section 3.5, "required notices". It says you must duplicate the Appendix on each file. Then go to the appendix and you'll see exactly the language from the files.
OK, i see
Another concern that I *just* realized: Strictly speaking, I'm not sure translations are allowed. Because if you translate, then it's no longer "a copy of ...".
here we run in circles: translation is not allowed, but if is not translated has no legal value in countries not using english as official language (but the same is true for any other license, being it MS EULA, GPL or CC)
There are other problems with the PDL. Essentially, that complying with all the terms is a significant burden, and it creates a "walled garden". Almost no one uses the PDL. Everyone picks either the FDL or a CC license.
PDL wan not created by OOo? thei may not even know PDL exist.
Changing license is not a decision we should take lightly, though. But there are very strong reasons why we might want to. Furthermore, *if* we are going to change license, the time to do it is *now*, before the 2.0 release.
Do you think we should start a discussion about the idea of changing licenses to the Creative Commons Attribution ?
i don't have (yet) an opinion about changing licensed, i had only some concerns raised by our translation and felt the right thing is to also express them upstream
-- nicu my OpenOffice.org pages: http://ooo.nicubunu.ro
