On 10/06/2009 09:47 AM, Jeffrey Fearn wrote:
Mikhail Gusarov wrote:
IANAL, but this can be specified in single file, like
Common_Content/common/README: "all the data in this directory is under
GFDL", but better check with your legal department.
Rudi is talking with the legal people about this, we expect a separate
update message shortly.
Thanks Jeff :)
Red Hat legal has identified a number of ambiguities around the licenses
involved: specifically, the relationship between the license of the
package against the license of the text in the Common Content files,
against the license of books that users produce that incorporates that
Common Content.
One particular problem is that as things stand right now, if the text in
Common Content is licensed under the GFDL, this means that any book that
anybody builds in Publican that incorporates that text must also be
licensed under the GFDL (or a compatible license). This, in turn,
creates an immediate incompatibility in any brand package that loads a
legal notice with a different license...
Legal's solution is that we include a note that explicitly spells out
that whatever license appears between the <legalnotice> tags in the
Legal_Notice.xml file applies only to the books into which it is
pre-loaded, and not the text of the Legal Notice file itself.
Furthermore, they suggest pretty much exactly what you suggested,
Mikhail -- we find as permissive a license as possible for the Common
Content files, and license them under that, separately from the rest of
the contents of the package.
So far we've looked at the WTFPL[1], CC0[2], and the so-called GNU
All-Permissive License[3].
We had to regretfully reject the WTFPL on the basis that some people
might find it offensive. :( This is a real shame, because it basically
stands for everything that we need the license on the Common Content
files to stand for...
When we read the GNU "All-Permissive" License, it turned out to be not
what it claims, since rather than being "all permissive", it requires
re-users to leave the license in place. Relicensing is therefore as
difficult as it is now.
Although CC0 is cumbersome (check out the full legal code! [4]), it
seems to do what we need it to do. It's therefore the current favourite
as license of choice for the Common Content files, unless anyone on the
list knows of a similarly broad license with less legalese?
Cheers
Ruediger
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL
[2] http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
[3]
http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/License-Notices-for-Other-Files.html
[4] http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode
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