[FM Discuss] license thread

[adam hyde]

hey

I have been thinking about this whole license issue. It seems to me that
this whole issue is screwing up real sharing of information. It reminds
me of what Lawrence Liang was saying about wikipedia - the question is
not the authority of knowledge but of collaborative knowledge
production. I am sure I am taking a broad interpretation of his
presentation, but thats how it came across to me.

The license issue seems to be stuck in a similar kind of hole. The
question is not which licenses we use but the sharing of information.

We all want to share information not to become stuck in debates between
various schools of licensing.

Unfortunately copyright itself has turned sharing into a license issue. 

Now we have essentially two schools - Free Software Foundation and
Creative Commons. Each trying to respect each others ground but each
employing incompatible legal terms for their licenses. So material under
CC cannot be used with material under a FSF license etc.

Those that produce any kind of content have to make their choice of
which school they belong to and consequently, which school they dont
belong too. At the same time I don't think I have met anyone who, at the
end of the day, just wants their material to be shared.

So... I was wondering if an interesting strategy might be to adopt a
more inclusive path. When it comes down to it I think the floss manuals
material should be free forever. I also think it should be used as many
places as possible. However, while the GPL guarantees the first, it does
not guarantee the later because no other CC or FSF license is compatible
with it.

My proposal then, is that we use the flexibility we have, as the
copyright owners to allow anyone to use the content under any CC or FSF
license. This means it can be used under the GPL (which is good for
developers), the FDL (which means it is good for wikipedia etc), the CC
licenses (which means it is is good for use by bloggers, on websites
etc).

This would be something like a license (eg .TRFL - 'the really free
license' ;). 

So the content would be covered with something like:
"(c) [author] you may use this material with any CC or FSF license"

I can visualise some kind of image that could be placed on each page, -
somehting like the Creative Commons images, with a gnu and a (cc) side
by side with a 'tick' over each to show we approve of both.

So this would mean we are 'outwardsly compatible' ie. anyone could use
our content under a CC/FSF license. I mean we want to ensure as many
people as possible get to use free software (right?), so lets not
inhibit that aim by being caught up in these license stand offs.

To preserve the floss manuals content we might then make a copy of all
floss manuals material periodically and keep it on our servers and use
the GPL to cover it. This means it is free forever.

What do you think?

adam




-- 


adam hyde
floss manuals

free manuals for free software
http://www.flossmanuals.net

mobile : + 31 6 154 22770 (Netherlands mobile)
email : adam at flossmanuals.net