On Sun, 24 Oct 1999, Deb Richardson wrote:
> "John D. Blair" wrote:
> >
> > Deb,
> > What's your reasoning for disallowing distribution of derivative works?
> > Is it just that the licenses for this sort of thing are young and
> > perhaps haven't yet been properly worked through?
>
> I'm not sure I understand the question. By "derivative works", I assume
> you're talking about documentation that is largely based on other docs,
> right? If these derivative works can be freely reformatted and
> distributed, then there's no problem with them being included. If
> reformatting/distribution is restricted, however, there is a problem.
To me at least, there's a *big* different between "reformatting" and
"modifying content". Reformatting occurs when you take the document and
change its layout but without changing the actual content of the document.
Often derivative works incur changes to the actual wording (adding
content, re-writing what is already there, or removing inaccuracies) which
would not be covered by allowing reformatting in the license.
> Ideally, someone like RedHat could come along and just scoop up the OSWG
> documentation set as a whole and drop it into a distribution. Having to
> sort through the docs and figure out which they're allowed to distribute
> and which they're not allowed to distribute is a bit of a hassle.
Agreed.
> I think perhaps I've missed your point. I am not, under any
> circumstances, an expert when it comes to licensing, which is why I'm
> looking for a bit of discussion/help here :)
The LinuxKBO went through this exact same problem- how do you license
content to allow freedom to all parties concerned (authors, the site, and
others who would like to re-distribute and/or modify the content).
We did a few things that I think helped make this a lot easier:
1) Talk to an attorney. Licenses are legal documents, if you're not an
expert, find one. Another good resource is the
[EMAIL PROTECTED] list.
2) Keep things simple. If you want all documents in your site to have a
license that has certain characteristics, why don't you pick a single
license for all docs? Or do you just like reading licenses so much that
you want to read each license to make sure it meets your criteria? If you
do a good job writing your license, people shouldn't have a big enough
problem with it to not write for you.
3) Figure out what role you are trying to play from a legal perspective
and look at those kinds of licenses. For example, the Linux KB Project
is a directory of Linux related documentation. Hence, we chose a license
very simular to Netscape's Open Directory License:
http://dmoz.org/license.html
--
Aaron Turner, Core Developer http://vodka.linuxkb.org/~aturner/
Linux Knowledge Base Organization http://linuxkb.org/
Because world domination requires quality open documentation.
