[FM Discuss] license thread

[Julian Oliver]

..on or around Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 09:47:23PM +1000, Brianna Laugher said:
> On 03/09/07, adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
> > sophea suggested putting all material into the Public Domain...any
> > thoughts on that?

there's little incentive for people to produce with the Public Domain as 
there's no refined legal context for protecting and defending copyright 
(should it come into question).

> 
> Bad idea! Force others to keep the works free: use a license with a
> copyleft/sharealike clause.

i feel the GPL is great to these ends, but you've heard me say that already.

it's better to be safe than sorry in the interim IMHO. the GPL is verbose and
restrictive but in such a way as it works well to protect author rights 
while encouraging safe re-distribution and downstream modification.

as an aside (and without wanting to be pedantic) i reckon it's a good idea 
to get away from the term 'CopyLeft' when promoting and distributing FLOSSManuals.

'CopyLeft' is a terribly confusing term for people new to distribution friendly
copyright licensing. in fact, i think it's a real barrier to the wider adoption 
of so called 'copyleft licenses'.

i've met a few people that thought anything released under a so-called 
'copyleft license' was free of copyright, as to them anything 'CopyLeft' 
must mean "the opposite of CopyRight".

out of interest it seems that even the CC webpage no-longer uses the term..

julian

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