Benjamin Seidenberg wrote: > Kern Sibbald wrote: >> John Goerzen wrote: >>> I'm forwarding, with permission, parts of a message from Kern Sibbald, >>> author of Bacula and its manual. The current manual, which has a >>> license listed at http://www.bacula.org/rel-manual/index.html, is not >>> DFSG-free. However, Kern has indicated a willingness to consider other >>> license arrangements. >>> >>> Kern's main concern (correct me if I'm wrong, Kern) is that he doesn't >>> want someone to be able to publish and sell paper versions of the >>> manual. >>> >> Yes, this is correct, but with the nuance, that I would be very happy to >> see the manual published in physical form provided there is an agreement >> for a reasonable financial contribution to the project, which should take >> into account normal royalties and how much work the publisher (or whoever >> transforms it) has to do to get it in a publishable form. >> >> In my other email, I attempt to explain my reasoning behind this. > > While this is an understandable viewpoint, and one that I can sympathize > with, any license that would provide protection such as you describe > would most definitely be in violation of the DFSG, and as such, not > distributable by debian, at least in the main section (though possibly > in non-free).
On the other hand, note that the GPL requires that distributors notify recipients about the Free Software status of the work, which would allow people to know "hey, I could get this for free online"; this might achieve a similar effect to what you desire. Furthermore, I don't know for sure, but a carefully worded license *might* manage to require a specific notice as to the unofficial, non-endorsed status of the manual, while still remaining DFSG-free. You could then specifically grant distributors the rights to call themselves an official and/or endorsed manual in exchange for whatever auxiliary licensing terms you want. - Josh Triplett
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