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Re: But where do we stand on OPL?

>>>>> "L" == Lars Wirzenius <[email protected]> writes:

    L> Gary Lawrence Murphy <[email protected]>:
    >> What is the stance of the LDP on the open publishing licence?

    L> Yet another licensing debate...
    L> If it can't be distributed freely, on whatever medium, it
    L> doesn't belong in the LDP. That is not negotiable.

Last year, all of the publishers would have said OPL was absurd and
was not negotiable, and Tim's editorial on ora.com he is quite firm in
his view of the business model for free docs being pure madness.  It's
unfortunate that they are willing to go half way, while we are not
willing to accomodate them, but it is not the end of the world.

It's not unprecidented. The FSF has the same rule on all software and
docs, and it does quite well without restricted contributions.  Since
this appears to be a sensitive issue, I won't trouble you about it.

I am a little confused, though.

On this one point of distribution, LDP has a GPL-like policy, but in a
previous email Poet states

    p> You CAN restrict people. You just can't CHARGE people.

and in another, Guylhem writes

    g> We asked RMS to write a DGPL, it will be ready in a near
    g> future.

    g> I think we should prefer it to any other license.

    g> However, each author would be free to choose *any* other license,
    g> we could just recommand DGPL.

    (emphasis is mine)

Both these statements imply allowing arbitrary restrictions on
authorship, ownership, editorial changes or whatever, and both are
consistent with an OPL-B licence; both also allow licences which
_are_ in violation of a GPL-like policy and would likely be nixed by
RMS.  I don't mean to be a pest, I just want to understand the LDP
policy so I don't get caught making promises I can't keep. Where _do_
we draw the line?

-- 
Gary Lawrence Murphy <[email protected]>  TeleDynamics Communications Inc
Business Telecom Services : Internet Consulting : http://www.teledyn.com
Linux Writers Workshop Archive: http://www.egroups.com/group/linux-hack/
"You don't play what you know; you play what you hear." -- (Miles Davis)


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