On Sun, 24 Oct 1999, Deb Richardson wrote:
[snip]
> Are you saying that "freely modifiable" should be a requirement? If so,
> I disagree. If, for example, I want to write a paper and publish it
> under a license that allows it to be freely reformatted and
> redistributed, I should be able to do so within the scope of the OSWG.
> If I don't want other people messing with my work, I think that's
> valid. If other people have suggestions or spot errors, they're free to
> email me about them, but it remains for me to decide whether those
> changes should be made.
So what happens when you become bored with maintaining the document and it
becomes grossly out of date, no longer useful, and even worse leads people
down the wrong path? This has happend with a number of the LDP documents
where the maintainer wasn't maintaining their documents and they end up
creating more problems than good. Often out of date/incorrect
documentation is worse than no documentation at all.
> I wouldn't write a paper and release it under a license that allowed for
> it to be freely modified.
But you'll write a program and release it that allows it to be freely
modified? I know there are people who feel like that, but personally I
don't "get it".
> I would, on the other hand, write a user
> manual under a license that allowed for it to be freely modified. I
Now I'm really confused. :-) How is a (short?) paper different from a
manual? What if an organization would like to modify your paper to make
it more applicable for internal-only purposes- ie not publicly
redistribute the changes?
> think that both of these are valid, so long as they can be freely
> reformatted and redistributed, and I think that both should be allowed
> into the OSWG documentation set.
I think the real problem I have with non-modifiable (content)
documentation for open source software is that the documentation is ALWAYS
behind the code. Having a semi-open development model (email suggestions)
is going to have a lot of documents which continue to be out of date. A
perfect example of this is the LASG (Linux Administrators Security Guide)
by Kurt Seifried. For a long time Kurt had a semi-open license which
forbidded people from making changes to the document (he only distributed
it in PDF format to help enforce that). I talked to Kurt about this
way-way back, and he was adament about this for keeping "quality control".
Now, just a few weeks ago he changed the license (OpenContent) to allow
anyone to contribute to the document because he found he didn't have the
time to properly maintain it like he had planned.
[snip]
> I also don't want to express a bias toward any particular license. I
> don't think it would be useful to alienate people who want to contribute
> but who don't care for our 'preferred' license. So long as a license
> allows for the two characteristics listed above, I think it's a valid
> license for inclusion.
I don't see why having a bias towards a certain license but allowing any
license that meets certain criteria would alienate people. Maybe I'm a
bit thicker skinned than most or something.
Either way, I'm glad that you're very strong on the reformatting and
redistribution requirements. We at the LinuxKB are always looking for
external documentation sources that allow us to include their content
within our directory.
--
Aaron Turner, Core Developer http://vodka.linuxkb.org/~aturner/
Linux Knowledge Base Organization http://linuxkb.org/
Because world domination requires quality open documentation.
