[FM Discuss] Licensing Chapter for Booki Manual

[John Curwood]

Hi Chepi and Tim,

Thanks for your replies:

Chepi, thanks for offering to start writing the chapter, the licensing
chapter is not critically urgent as I still have other chapters I'm
working on so your offer to work over the weekend is fine.

Tim, I like your ideas for the chapter structure. With regards to the
listed licenses they are the options that currently appear when you
perform the tasks of creating a book, importing an image and publishing
a book. I can see what you mean about legal liability around
recommending licenses, I feel that instead we do need to provide a clear
structure for helping choose a licence as it is incredibly confusing
when you don't have any prior experience.

Thanks and Cheers,

John

On Sat, 2010-05-29 at 08:35 +1200, Tim McNamara wrote:
> 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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