[FM Discuss] License question

[Walter van Holst]

On 4/17/11 10:40 PM, Rob Myers wrote:

> "License Change
> FLOSS Manuals is changing the license of all material in the repository
> from the Free Documentation License to the GPL. Why? Well...the issue of
> licenses and documentation is a frustrating road to travel. There are
> many 'free licenses' in the world, but none of them work well as
> documentation licenses if you have the following prerequisites:
> compatability with the GPL ease of ..."

Which from a legal perspective is nonsense (I am a lawyer). CC-BY-SA is 
perfectly GPL compatible, and applying the GPL to documentation is 
asking for trouble. Application of the GPL to a book means that any 
reseller of the book is in obliged to provide the 'source' of the book, 
whatever that may be. And this is assuming that GPL compatibility is a 
prerequisite that makes legal sense, which it doesn't since 
documentation is hardly ever considered as inseperable from the code.

Anyway, this means that I am going to have my project hosted elsewhere. 
Both CC0 and GPL are unacceptable.

Regards,

  Walter