Kern Sibbald wrote: >> 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. > > Hmmm. Possibly having an "invariant" section (or whatever it is called) > stating the unofficial, non-endorsed status of any commercially printed > version of the manual would do what you suggest.
I didn't mean to suggest an invariant section; DFSG-free works can't have invariant sections. I simply meant requiring some form of notice, much like the GPL requires that you include appropriate copyright and license notice. > I'm going to try to come up with some such wording over the next week, but > if you or someone else could suggest such a "carefully worded license" for > the Bacula manual that would be acceptable to Debian, it would for me be a > good solution, and I would very likely accept it -- obviously, I would > like to see the wording before making a firm commitment ... How about something vaguely along the lines of this: "If you publish this work in paper form, you must conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy a notice of the unofficial, non-endorsed status of the work." Notice the intentional lack of specific wording or placement required for such a notice. I modelled this after the GPL's clause 1. Note, though, that any such clause will likely make your documentation GPL-incompatible, which will likely cause problems down the road given that Bacula uses the GPL. I personally would suggest just using the GPL on the manual, and relying on the fact that the GPL requires a conspicuous and appropriate notice as to the GPL status of the work; and furthermore, that any distributor would need to either include the full source to the manual or an offer for such. - Josh Triplett
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