Hello all, Jody Garnett points out that the standard documentation license for Geotools docs is Gnu FDL. He points to: http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOT/1.3+Documentation+License as an example.
I would suggest that the Geotools project also needs to obtain for itself the formal assignment of copyright from contributors. The projecct should decide: (1) to ask for such assignment (2) which entity (PMC, OSGeo, other) would receive such assignment. This change would provide the Geotools project with the flexibility to address future issues surrounding documentation while providing all readers with exactly the same freedoms as they now enjoy. Documentation may be fundamentally different from code and the consequences of licensing documentation under the GFDL or similar legal aggreements are not yet fully understood and are certainly less well understood than the consequences of licensing code under the GPL or LGPL. This issue recently came up in the Gnumeric project due to the demands of the Debian project for the full freedom of its users. While that particular issue may be on the road to resolution, the situation made apparent to the Gnumeric project its lack of control over its own docs. We realized that we might, all of a sudden, lose the ability to ship our application with its core documentation; the effort to contact all the contributing authors, spanning over a decade of contributions, appeared insurmountable. Clearing this up at the start of a substantial new documentation project would seem like a time saver, even if it takes a little of your time this week. cheers, adrian On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 20:41 +0200, Jody Garnett wrote: > Martin Desruisseaux wrote: > >> For now, I'm requiring you to give *me* copyright so that I can give it > >> to whatever org you all decide on and we can have a clean chain of > >> custody. > The developers guide has information on the "documentation license" used > for all geotools documentation (including a programmers guide). > Jody > ------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Geotools-devel mailing list Geotools-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
