Hi everyone,
with the advent of “more” documentation, we of course have a problem
that is “in” at the moment, namely, how to licence it. Last century,
nobody'd have bothered, but this seems to be important.
The GNU so-called Free Documentation License does, of course, not even
come close to be an eligible candidate. I hope I don't have to explain;
there are enough Debian persons here to know why.
wbx@ has assigned me the task of managing everything licencing related
in FreeWRT last year because I have experience doing it in MirBSD, and
even some experience in software licencing reaching back into the last
century, and I've been following the discussions on Debian, the Open
Source Initiative and Free Software Foundation for some time.
----
In general, I'd like a position from FreeWRT to agree on two things:
First is, to only produce content that is OSD¹- and DFSG²-free, no
matter where. (The binary stuff we get from vendors is not content
we produce, so it doesn't count here and we're pretty much clean.)
>>> I'd like feedback from all the committers regarding that, and
>>> possibly a vote.
Second is, a policy on documentation licencing. This is not that
important, but we should be clear about this before the wiki starts
off big and documentation contributions flow in.
>>> Let's discuss this among these who contributed documentation
>>> or want to contribute docs or to the wiki. No need to vote
>>> right now, though.
There are quite a few possible licences, and I'd like to share a few
thoughts on them:
• GNU GPL
Pro: OSD- and DFSG-free (although only barely); same licence for
the documentation as for (most of) the code; well-known to
people
Con: Unknown future (I'm doing software licencing for several years
now, but when I read the GPLv3 draft I didn't understand a thing),
but we could work around that by chosing GPLv2. Rather large.
Makes it difficult to combine. Not really suited for documentation.
• GNU LGPL
Pro: Same as GNU GPL; makes it easier to combine though.
Con: Same as GNU GPL except the combining problems. LGPLv2.0 or v2.1
are fine, but even more large (LGPL ~= 25K, GPL ~= 18K). Also,
choosing LGPL for the docs but GPL for the code doesn't match
(which is not a problem except for proliferation).
• BSD-style licences
Example: read FreeWRT/scripts/param.h
Pro: Very free, short, easy to understand and apply. Suitable for
both code and documentation. (And actually, quite some of the
code in FreeWRT is covered by this licence instead of the GPL,
which makes it more free; this licence is GPL compatible of
course. This means we don't add just another licence here but
simply reuse one we're already using.)
Con: Some people might not want their documentation to be embedded
in, say, books sold commercially. (It is unclear if this isn't
an issue with GPL/LGPL as well. See below for more thoughts.)
• Creative Commons
Pro: Many variants, translated into many languages. Suited especially
for documentation.
Con: Unclear if all variants are OSD- and DFSG-free. Suited rather
for books than for small pieces of documentation like these
appearing in a Wiki.
(I admit not having researched as much into CC as I did into the
others, but I could do that if desired.)
• there may be other documentation-specific licences; suggest any if
you really must
Some more general thoughts:
Most people from “the copyleft camp” would scream “BSD licence lets big
corporations take our code for nothing in return” now. While this is
indeed true, we're talking about documentation here. A few pages in the
Wiki (possibly, most of them are less than one page large), the handbook,
in-tree documentation. What do you fear? The example licence (not strictly
BSD from UCB, but even shorter) can easily be modified to include a clause
like “… as long as due credit is given …”.
This would even make it possible to print parts of the Wiki and Handbook
onto a coffee mug (and the credits in a 3pt font, or mention them on the
mug producer's page only). This is, for example, not possible with GNU
Emacs, because they'd have to reprint the GNU FDL as well (so you'd rather
need a coffee barrel), which, due to not being OSD- and DSFG-compliant,
isn't a valid choice anyway, but we can't sure if it doesn't also apply
to GPL/LGPL.
----
I hereby propose a project statement on documentation as follows:
We agree to provide new documentation on a BSD-style licence, but allow
for inclusion of documentation under other OSD¹- and DFSG²-free licences
into the Wiki as well.
This is something new, for example, Wikipedia only allows GNU FDL content;
I think allowing a broader range (but defaulting to “more free” for the
abovementioned reasons – think coffee mugs ☻) is something sensible to do.
I'd also like to set up the licence template for the Wiki to something like:
----- cut here -----
Copyright (c) <year> <your name here>
Provided that these terms and disclaimer and all copyright notices
are retained or reproduced in accompanying documents and due credit
is given to the authors, permission is granted to deal in this work
without restriction, including unlimited rights to use, publicly
perform, distribute, sell, modify, merge, give away, or sublicence.
This work is provided “AS IS” and WITHOUT WARRANTY of any kind, to
the utmost extent permitted by applicable law, neither express nor
implied; without malicious intent or gross negligence. In no event
may a licensor, author or contributor be held liable for indirect,
direct, other damage, loss, or other issues arising in any way out
of dealing in the work, even if advised of the possibility of such
damage or existence of a defect, except proven that it results out
of said person's immediate fault when using the work as intended.
----- cut here -----
Note this is slightly modified from the one in scripts/param.h to
add the aforementioned clause of giving “due credit” (otherwise,
coffee mug producers and router vendors could get the idea of not
mentioning you at all; this is less strict than the dreaded BSD
advertising clause but doesn't have its problems).
This solution would allow us to, for example, copy pages from the
OpenWrt wiki and modify them appropriately (if we want this at all;
this probably depends on the quality of their pages ☻); it would
just have to be mentioned at the foot of the page that that one is
under a different licence.
----
¹) Open Source Definition:
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.php
²) Debian Free Software Guidelines:
http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
These two pretty much do the same, but their interpretations are
sometimes different, due to the OSD having more details, but the
Debian folks being more interested in being “really free”.
Of course, the licences mentioned also meet the FSF's criteria
of Free Software Licenses.
bye,
//mirabile
--
I believe no one can invent an algorithm. One just happens to hit upon it
when God enlightens him. Or only God invents algorithms, we merely copy them.
If you don't believe in God, just consider God as Nature if you won't deny
existence. -- Coywolf Qi Hunt
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