Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
More thoughts on this...
I have never understood why *all* documentation must be subject to the
same limited selection of licenses.
[snip]
Licensing is an interesting beast. Always has been. One of the
problems that exist with any kind of Open Source documentation is one
that most people don't like to thing about. It isn't maintaining the
docs, it isn't figuring out who was the last to do what, it is
Legality. To put it in another term, being able to support the document
in court if the need arises.
Anyone can submit their work to the project as Public Domain. Public
Domain documents mean that ANYONE can do ANYTHING with the document.
There is no thought or legal problem about the document or submission,
because there isn't a need, it is in the Public Domain.
Any other license that tries to limit what you can do with it, means
that the document WILL have to be defended at some point. What if a
company takes the document a copies the document and starts charging?
If we don't want people to do that, then we have to have a legal leg to
stand on. (NOTE: Not that we don't want anyone to do this, just using
as an example.)
Keep in mind, I am NOT a lawyer. This is what I have picked up over the
years of working within Open Source.
To fight in court, means that you have to have EVERY SINGLE person that
worked on a document, or submission, or codebase, in the court at the
same time. Or, they would have to sign legal documents saying someone
else can appear for them. The Joint Copyright Assignment (JCA) does
this when you fax in your form.
The Public Document License (PDL) tries to log everyone that worked on a
document, so that if something ever happens, then the project could get
in touch with everyone, and see if they want to defend it, or just let
it go.
If you can not prove where every piece of the document comes from, and
who worked on it, then you are basically giving up the document. If you
cannot prove where a specific piece of the document came from, you also
open up yourself to litigation by corporate entities.
Let's say for instance Microsoft decides a specific section of the User
Guide was stolen from them. We would have to figure out who worked on
said section, and be able to track where it came from.
Otherwise the whole document could be taken down, because the project
couldn't prove that one section.
OpenOffice.org is being designed so that corporate and private interests
can be maintained. If we let everyone do anything they want, then
corporate interests would look at the project as a legal minefield.
--
Scott Carr
OpenOffice.org
Documentation Co-Lead
http://documentation.openoffice.org
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