On 04/23/2015 08:41 AM, John Snow wrote: > I know I said "primarily to be difficult" but I was just being > facetious. I didn't find the GPL2+ to be suitable for documentation, > strictly, so I went to read up on the documentation licenses that the > fsf support/recommend. > > There's the GNU documentation license, but I found that unsuitable for a > couple reasons -- one of them was that you are forbidden(!) from > changing the text of the license,
Note that it is usually only the license text proper that is locked down; the rest of the documentation is not under the same restriction unless you declare specific invariant sections such as a cover page. But I know that the Debian project has typically frowned upon any use of FDL with invariant sections, and the FDL has therefore earned a somewhat questionable reputation outside of FSF projects. > and there are some provisions in there > I didn't like, such as requiring the full text of the license to be > included with compiled copies of the document. That's not something I > care about -- a reference in source, for instance, is sufficient, or a > copy of the license being distributed *with* the compiled source is > fine, but I have no need for the full license to be copied with the > compiled version. Yes, I like those benefits of the FreeBSD Documentation License. > > The other documentation license the fsf recommends is the FreeBSD one, > and that one looked appealing, short, and to the point, so it is the one > I chose. It is essentially the FreeBSD license with words altered to > clarify what "code" and "source" means with respect to a document. In particular, according to the FSF, the FreeBSD Documentation License _should be_ acceptable for use with a GPLv2 program: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#FreeDocumentationLicenses although this is probably not the right list to get a definitive answer from a lawyer familiar with the various copyright licenses and laws. > > Sorry for /actually/ being difficult; but Eric Blake was urging me to > select a license instead of relying on the implicit GPL, so I did go out > of my way to choose one I found appropriate. > > I stand by my pick. I also agree with the pick; I think that GPLv2+ on documentation is a bit questionable - if someone else implements the same interface using just the documentation, is their code required to be under the GPL by virtue of "using" the documentation? Using a more permissive documentation license feels nicer to me, as it would allow non-GPL implementations if someone is so inclined. Sorry if encouraging the issue has made matters more difficult. -- Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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