[FM Discuss] Licensing Chapter for Booki Manual

[Tim McNamara]

John,

Licencing is indeed a complicated issue. It's always nice when people can
clarify things!

I think you've listed a  For example, the code licences you've listed below
are really not appropriate for documents. For example, the GNU LGPL is
really to provide the ability for a free software product to talk to
non-free software libraries.

I don't understand your distinction between written artistic works and
imagery. Why two classes of licence?

I would be very hesitant to provide recommendations. You run into legal
liability for providing advice on intellectual property. I would prefer to
provide examples, ideally with verbatim quotes that those projects used to
say why they went for a particular licence.

Here's how I would structure the article:

*Licencing*
 - general intro to topic
 - general intro into Creative Commons
*Copyleft vs other licences*
 - explain this general distinction
 - explain "All rights reserved"
*Public domain
* - not always possible, in many countries it's impossible for the creator
to forgo rights*
* - CC0 is one approach*
* - explain that this means you forgo all rights to the work
 - add a note that CC-BY would provide wide dissemination, and you would
still be recognised as the creator of the work
*Copyleft licences*
  - CC-BY-SA (unported?)
*Non-copyleft licences*
  - CC-BY
*Including software code?*
  - Provide a recommendation to use code-specific licences (GNU GPL, MIT)
  - Direct people to http://opensource.org/

[goes and looks at Booki properly for the first time]
I've just realised that it's not possible to have multiple licences in a
single book, e.g. you can't have a copyright for the text in one licence,
and copyright for source code in another...

Tim


On 28 May 2010 22:48, John Curwood <marketing at lovinglearning.co.nz> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have been working on the Booki User Guide and have encountered several
> areas where a user will need to select an appropriate licence for their
> content (1- When creating a book, 2- When uploading images, 3- when
> publishing a book).  As Booki is designed to be used by a wide audience
> I think a chapter on licensing is necessary and not only should it
> include a description of each licence but also give strengths and
> weaknesses as well as describing situations in which you would use
> certain licenses and why, enabling a user with no prior publishing
> experience to choose the right licence for their work.  While I can add
> brief descriptions of the licenses, I lack the experience to provide the
> extra info that is required to help create a decision making framework
> so I am asking for volunteers from the list to help add the licensing
> chapter to the Booki User Guide.  To do this you will need to have an
> account set up with Booki (www.booki.cc).  The list of available
> licenses is given below, Creating a new book and uploading images have
> the same options, while publishing has several extra licenses to choose
> from making it very daunting for the un-initiated. :)
>
> Licensing options for Creating a Book/Uploading Images:
>        CC-0
>        CC-BY
>        CC-BY-SA
>        General Public Licence
>        MIT
>        Public Domain
>
> Licensing options when Publishing:
>        GPL
>        GPLv2+
>        LGPL
>        LGPLv2.1
>        GPLv3+
>        GPLv2
>        GPLv3
>        CC-BY
>        CC-BY-SA
>        Artistic
>        BSD
>        Public Domain
>        LGPLv3
>        MIT
>
> Cheers,
>
> John
>
>
>
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>
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