Peter Hillier-Brook wrote:
It's not an objection to the LGPL per se: it's just that a cursory
reading of it clearly establishes that it is not relevant to documentation.
The authors of the GPL agree with you:
"The GPL was designed for programs; it contains lots of complex clauses
that are crucial for programs, but that would be cumbersome and
unnecessary for a book or manual. For instance, anyone publishing the
book on paper would have to either include machine-readable 'source
code' of the book along with each printed copy, or provide a written
offer to send the 'source code' later."
-- gnu.org
So, the (L)GPL presents problems if you want to provide printed copies
of the documentation for example. The FSF then goes on to suggest the
GFDL but that has its own set of problems. Debian won't allow the GFDL
in because it's not really a free license (e.g. it can have invariant
sections).
The PDL has is own set of problems. For example, you are required to
keep track of changes (either by hand, or through software). Whether you
install a CVS server, or decide to keep track of changes by hand, this
requirement significantly raises the barrier to modification. It has a
lock-in effect, which is the opposite of what you'd expect from a "free"
license. If you do it by hand you also have legal uncertainty because
you can never know if your description of changes are enough to satisfy
the potential judge.
A general issue to consider is recursive licenses. That is, licenses
that require you to release modifications under the same license.
Examples include the GPL, LGPL, PDL and Creative Commons Attribution
ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA). Recursive licenses have pros and cons. The pro is
that they offer greater protection. The con occurs when there is more
than one of those licenses. As each one creates a walled garden around
itself, it is impossible to, for example, mix GPL content with PDL
content, or mix CC-BY-SA content with GPL content. So the best you can
do is pick a popular license. If you must be in a walled garden, it
might as well be one that covers millions of works and not just one project.
The most popular recursive licenses are:
* GPL/LGPL
* GFDL
* CC-BY-SA
Each of these has huge ammounts of content available. I've mentioned the
drawbacks of the GPL. Another drawback of the GPL from a walled garden
POV is that the content under the GPL is usually source code. If you are
writing documentation, you'd want to mix it with documentation. For
example, you might want to take an OOo tutorial and a Thunderbird
tutorial and make a document about how to setup a home office using Free
Software.
So, without doubt, the best choices are GFDL and CC-BY-SA (assuming that
you agree that recursive licensing is desirable).
Now I've mentioned the issues with the GFDL (e.g. invariant sections),
so I think we should incline towards the CC-BY-SA. A further advantage
of the CC-BY-SA is that the license is relatively simple, clear, and it
was written with the entire world in mind (not just one country). These
are very desirable attributes to have on a license.
So, in conclusion, I think that CC-BY-SA is the best license for
documentation.
Now, there may be special circumstances that might affect the decision.
For example, if you want a document that can be mixed with Thunderbird
documentation, then you would want to find out what license they use and
pick something compatible.
Incidentally, Mozilla uses the CC-BY-SA.
Cheers,
Daniel.
--
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