Currently, LFS ticket 1765, http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/ticket/1765, suggests that LFS use the licenses that are currently in the BLFS book. Jim, Ryan, and I have had some off-line conversations about this and feel it is time to open up this discussion to the community.
Currently, LFS, HLFS, and Cross-LFS have the same license. This license is "home grown" and has not been vetted by anyone knowledgeable in the law. BLFS went to a dual license format some time ago using a Creative Commons License, http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/cvs/appendices/creat-comm.html, for the book while simultaneously providing a Academic Free License, http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/cvs/appendices/ac-free-lic.html, for the code. Jim has pointed out that there are problems with the CC: http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary http://www.satn.org/archive/2003_04_27_archive.html http://zesty.ca/cc.html He and Ryan are proposing the Open Publication License, http://www.opencontent.org/openpub, for all the books. I've looked at it and it seems to meet the standards of having a recognized license and protecting the books. If it is the community's decision, I have no problem with using this in BLFS. It is used by several organizations including: Linux Gazzette http://linuxgazette.net/copying.html Debian http://www.debian.org/opl FedoraMobile http://fedoramobile.org/open-publication-license Gimp Savvy Book - http://slashdot.org/articles/00/03/12/2358211.shtml LinuxLab - http://linuxlab.dk/license/opl O'Reilly In addition to the main license, I also feel that the books should dual license the code (scripts and config files) in the the books with a very open license such as the AFL currently in BLFS or a BSD type of license. The reason is to basically leave the instructions unencumbered. For instance, IMO, the output of jhalfs should not have the requirements of the OPL, but with only one license there would be unnecessary overhead if the instructions are extracted from the books. Ryan suggested the GPL for the code, but that has a lot of overhead that I don't feel is necessary. For instance, there would be a need to put relatively long GPL statements in each file in the bootscripts and the need to include extra copyright files with the jhalfs output. A general list of Open Source licenses can be found at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ What is the community opinion? -- Bruce -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
