At 09:17 PM 4/2/00 -0700, you wrote:
>--- Julian Hall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Theres nothing that stops you from writing your own
>> license that states
>> something along the lines of 'you can distribute
>> these documents however
>> you like. we don't care. don't bother us about
>> them.'...
>>
>> IMHO, neither GPL nor LGPL are that great.
>>
> Yes, there is....... its called international
>copyright law. By default the recipient of any
>copyrighted material has no rights to do anything with
>the material except:
>read it,
>write about it,
>reference it,
>or internalize the data contained within.
> The idea of the GPL, the LGPL, or the FDL is to
>allow the recipient certain non-default rights without
>having to obtain specific written permission for each
>time that they wish to exercise such rights. It is a
>time and effort saver for the copyright holder.
>Because of this we can have freeware and not have to
>worry about it becoming public domain due to the lack
>of care to enforce the copyright. So, since the FDL
>does not say anywhere in itself that the reader of a
>doc file may write a new license for it, he may
>not--for any FDL'd doc file. I hope that this clears
>that misconception up a little bit.......
>
>Drew Northup, N1XIM
I don't have any misconceptions; I understand copyright law as well as most
people. The point I'm making is that all the GNU licences I've seen
(although I haven't read the FDL yet) include politically motivated
anti-commercial restriction clauses that I personally disagree with, and
I'd rather use another, less restrictive, alternative. I won't disagree
with LGPL for the code as it is the lesser of many evils (including public
domain publication), but I don't think there's anything wrong with public
domain publication for the documentation.
International copyright law recognises that a statement placed alongside
the material stating something like 'This material may be used for any
purposes and in any way you wish' will grant the receiver of the material
any rights they want. And it's a bit shorter than the GNU license! You
may wish to add 'including but not limited to redistribution in any medium
or media, with or without charge', if you really want to clarify.
