[TOS] Using FLOSS Manuals for textbook authoring

[Karsten Wade]

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 08:39:37AM +0200, adam hyde wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-08-23 at 23:15 +0100, Ross Gardler wrote:
> > 2009/8/23 adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net>:
> > > how does   dual license sound? (ugh..i hate these license thingys)...
> > 
> > I can't speak for the community as a whole, so my comments are only my
> > own. Since we already discussed and agreed on a CC-BY-SA licence I'd
> > much rather stick to that. I don't see any need to dual licence. I
> > could be persuaded if we were talking about a licence that was
> > appropriate for text, or if there were a need to use some other
> > licence. But dual licencing under the GPL makes no sense to me at all
> > - it will only serve to confuse things in my opinion.
> 
> well, we like to keep it in gpl as then the material can be used in
> other manuals/textbooks within fm...this is a big advantage to others. 

IANAL and TINLA, and I barely talk to lawyers for Fedora, but the
little bit that I have worked in is around licensing content.

Our lawyer friends really like the CC BY et al licensing.  From what I
understand, the GPL is not considered to be a good license for
content.  It can be used and has been used on many occasions, but
there is a reason why free content licenses have been developed.

In Fedora, we are currently relicensing all of our documentation from
the alive-but-deprecated OPL to the CC BY SA 3.0.  One main reason for
doing this is to move from a small island mainly by ourselves to a
very large continent full of free content that we can mingle with.

That said, the GPL is listed as approved for docs and content in
general, but there are practical reasons against it.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Documentation_Licenses
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Content_Licenses

So, the irony is, a big reason to use the CC licensing is to be
compatible with many other works in the world.  The request here to
use the GPL as well is to be compatible with other works in
FLOSSManuals.net.

It's seems more complex to dual-license, but I'm willing to listen.

Also, I'm curious why FLOSSManuals.net uses the GPL for documentation
instead of a purpose-built doc license?

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener
http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
AD0E0C41
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