I have to agree with Deb. While I think it makes sense to clear up confusion around two licenses with the same acronym (which may or may not involve unifying them), I am in no way interested in trying to Borg-ize the realm of content licenses. I say hoorah to rms for pushing this important idea forward. We all benefit whenever someone takes up the cause.
David Deb Richardson wrote: > David Lawyer wrote: > > > Since Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation has drafted a > > "GNU Free Documentation License" I suggest that the Open Publication > > License (OPL) be merged with it. > > I think that this is an extremely bad idea. Having more licenses, > particularly those like the OPL and the new FSF licenses, is a good > thing. Having only one license doesn't do much for an author's "freedom > of choice", really, particularly when you're talking about removing the > aspects of the OPL that make it so attractive in many situations. > > > The OPL lets the author choose an option in the license regarding > > modification. One case is where one may freely modify the publication > > without needing to contact the original author (or current maintainer). > > Another option (which I don't like) is to allow modification only if > > the original author consents. Suppose the original author can't be > > located, is non-responsive, or is not cooperative in permitting needed > > modifications. I think that for free publications, anyone should > > ultimately have the right to modify them. > > I, as an author, would very much like to be able to choose whether > others are allowed to modify my released documents or not. I would also > like to be able to choose who has and hasn't print publication rights. > Granted, restricting print publication rights is a very serious > restriction. Documents licensed under such restrictions are not > appropriate for the Open Source Writers Group project (you can read our > Licensing Policy at http://www.oswg.org/docs/about.html). As an author, > however, I would very much like to have that choice. More importantly, > the ability to restrict modifications is very important to me. If I > release a paper or essay, for example, I would like to control who makes > modifications and what modifications are made. > > Technical documentation is a different story. I agree that Open Content > technical documentation should, whereever possible, be released under a > license that allows for free distribution, modification, and > publication. But technical documentation is only one catagory of the > documents that could possibly be covered by the Open Publication > License. The OPL is, in my opinion, an excellent foundation for a more > generally usable license. > > It also has to be accepted that not everyone is going to release their > documents under a license that is acceptable to everyone. That's just > part of the game. We cannot _force_ authors to release their docs under > a certain license (or at all, for that matter), so why would we work to > eliminate valid licensing options in an effort to create a single > license? It's simply non-sensical, and completely goes against the > whole idea of "freedom" in terms of allowing an author's freedom of > choice. > > - deb > > ([EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]) > .======================================. > | This has been an OpenContent mailing | > | http://www.opencontent.org | > `======================================'
