Re: General Positive Feedback re: revision of site (fwd)

[Terry Dawson <terry@albert.animats.net>]

On Mon, Sep 27, 1999 at 09:47:35PM +0200, Guylhem Aznar wrote:
>  - the document must be released under a free license (with details in
>    the new manifesto, a license guide, and a set of license)

This sounds fine.

>  - the document must be freely redistributable and printable, but short
>    exclusivity (less than 1 year) can be given for initial publication

You already know how I stand on this matter. I think it is counterproductive,
but I wouldn't oppose it so long as it could be decided, but the copyright
holder(s), on a document by document basis and not be a blanket arrangement.

>  - the author must accept, if he can't be reached for more than 2 month
>    or if he ever decides to stop maintaining his document, that someone
>    else will be given the right to maintain his document (while
>    acknowledging previous author of course) under the same license

This is a little silly to state. Firstly, it's already covered by the
notion of a free document. Secondly it's only allowable if the license for
the document in question allows it (kinda the same point from another angle)

In my opinion the solution is what has already been stated in a variety
of forms, and was always the intention and was always *informally* the
practice of the LDP:

    For a document to be considered part of the LDP it must meet a
    a defined minimum standard with respect to the freedom of the document.

This has always been what the LDP was about.

What is lacking is a clear definition of what that minimum standard is, ie
precisely what the freedoms that a document license *must* allow are.

for exmaple:
    An LDP document license must:
        Ensure that all copyright notices are protected and not be removed.

        Allow use, copying, redistribution by anyone at no charge.

        allow derivative works including translations, conversion into other
        media and conversion into other data formats, AND

        insist that all derivative works are unambiguously marked as derivative
        works and include identification of who made the changes and when.

        .....
    
I'm not a lawyer, I'm not going to pretend that I could generate an adequate
description, nor will I claim that generating such a description will be
easy to do. I do believe it is absolutely fundamental to the LDP moving
forward. The License issue, which has been around for some time now (years)
has to be addressed.

Is there any good reason why we can't use the OpenSource Definition?

Terry

-- 
terry@albert.animats.net, terry@linux.org.au


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