Scott Carr wrote: > Please keep in mind that if the License changes to GPL/BY, I can no > longer post them to the Documentation project.
The community council recently approved the BY license if the work is in a non-editable format (like PDF). So, from your point of view, nothing will really change. > What is the reason for the change, if I may ask? In summary, because the PDL is difficult to use if you are going to develop documentation the way it's done at OOoAuthors (ie. many authors constantly editing each other's work). This also brings legal uncertainty (since we don't quite meet all the requirements). We still used the PDL because it was the only license OOo would allow. But this changed recently when the community council approved the BY license. For a longer explanation: I had been thinking about the change for a while. But a post from Nicu triggered the discussion: http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgNo=6412 But you can safely skip up to here: http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgNo=6426 That's when the discussion picked up. We were talking about a using the BY license because it's much more convenient than PDL, and now it's allowed. At one point Ralph Aichinger raised the concern that the BY license is considered "non-free" by Debian. http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgNo=6442 So I went and talked to the Creative Commons and Debian-legal lists to see if there was a way to have this resolved. After a very lengthy (but enlightening) discussion with both teams, we came to a breakthrough: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/03/msg00241.html And decided that a dual GPL/BY license would keep everyone happy. I then reported back here with a "summary". I divided it into 3 emails: http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgNo=6472 http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgNo=6473 http://user-faq.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=authors&msgNo=6474 The last one is where the discussion continued. The response was positive, but we spent a while longer refining the copyright notice, and asking Debian-legal for final fine-tunning tips. And that takes us to where we are today. But in summary: A GPL/BY will be more convenient, and we can still send you the PDF files to post on the Docs site. So nothing's lost, and much is gained. Cheers, -- Daniel Carrera | I don't want it perfect, Join OOoAuthors today! | I want it Tuesday. http://oooauthors.org |
