Licensing of D-W training session tutorials

[Francesco Poli]

Hi Debian-Women!

It seems that the training sessions you organize are having lot of
success. Congratulations and thanks a lot for organizing them!

I appreciate that, after each session, a tutorial is created for future
reference and for the benefit of those (like me, unfortunately) who
couldn't attend the actual IRC training session.

Indeed, a number of tutorials have already been published:
http://wiki.debian.org/IntroDebianPackaging
http://wiki.debian.org/UsingGit
http://wiki.debian.org/Python/Packaging

However, I don't see any license for those tutorials on the Wiki site.
As I am sure you know, no license means "All Rights Reserved" with
current copyright laws.

This is a shame: a lot of good documentation is being published from
the D-W training sessions in a non-free manner!   :-(

It would be really great if those tutorials were licensed in a clearly
DFSG-free manner.
I suggest that copyright holders for those tutorials be contacted and
asked to license the tutorials under the GNU GPL v2 or otherwise the
Expat license (depending on the preferences regarding copyleft...).

[Before someone asks, I would definitely avoid the controversial
Creative Commons licenses and the horrible GFDL...]

Please let me know if this suggestion makes sense to you.
Thanks for your time.


P.S.: I am not subscribed to the list, so please Cc: me on replies.
  Thanks!

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Re: Licensing of D-W training session tutorials

[Rayna]

Hey,

2010/12/11 Francesco Poli 

> [snip]
>
> However, I don't see any license for those tutorials on the Wiki site.
> As I am sure you know, no license means "All Rights Reserved" with
> current copyright laws.
>
> This is a shame: a lot of good documentation is being published from
> the D-W training sessions in a non-free manner!   :-(
>

This is a very good question and you reacted faster than me (I was
proofreading my mail on this topic before sending it :) ).


> It would be really great if those tutorials were licensed in a clearly
> DFSG-free manner.
> I suggest that copyright holders for those tutorials be contacted and
> asked to license the tutorials under the GNU GPL v2 or otherwise the
> Expat license (depending on the preferences regarding copyleft...).
>
> [Before someone asks, I would definitely avoid the controversial
> Creative Commons licenses and the horrible GFDL...]
>

May you clarify this? AFAIK, only the clauses "nc" and "nd" (as well as
their joint use) of the CC licenses are considered as non-free. Regarding
the GFDL, the obligation to include the full text of the license can be
circumvented by adding the link to it. At least, I've seen it that way on
some wikis.

The Free Art License (or in French Licence Art Libre) can be a very nice
option, especially combined to CC-by-SA and GFDL.

Finally, I am not that familiar with the Expat license, so it would be great
if you could detail its particularities a bit :)


Cheers,
Rayna

-- 
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PhD Student
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Re: Licensing of D-W training session tutorials

[Lars Wirzenius]

On la, 2010-12-11 at 17:09 +0100, Francesco Poli wrote:
> I suggest that copyright holders for those tutorials be contacted and
> asked to license the tutorials under the GNU GPL v2 or otherwise the
> Expat license (depending on the preferences regarding copyleft...).

You failed to mention that you'd already asked at least me about this
privately. I told you that I don't want to start licensing individual
pages. If any licensing stuff happens, then the whole wiki needs to be
addressed, not just a few particular pages. It is lunacy to have each
page be licensed differently.

> [Before someone asks, I would definitely avoid the controversial
> Creative Commons licenses [- - -]

Controversial? Bah.


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Re: Licensing of D-W training session tutorials

[Francesco Poli]

On Sat, 11 Dec 2010 18:05:28 +0100 Rayna wrote:

[...]
> 2010/12/11 Francesco Poli 
> 
> > [snip]
> >
> > However, I don't see any license for those tutorials on the Wiki site.
> > As I am sure you know, no license means "All Rights Reserved" with
> > current copyright laws.
> >
> > This is a shame: a lot of good documentation is being published from
> > the D-W training sessions in a non-free manner!   :-(
> >
> 
> This is a very good question and you reacted faster than me (I was
> proofreading my mail on this topic before sending it :) ).

Hi Rayna,
thanks for agreeing on the goodness of the topic!   ;-)

> 
> 
> > It would be really great if those tutorials were licensed in a clearly
> > DFSG-free manner.
> > I suggest that copyright holders for those tutorials be contacted and
> > asked to license the tutorials under the GNU GPL v2 or otherwise the
> > Expat license (depending on the preferences regarding copyleft...).
> >
> > [Before someone asks, I would definitely avoid the controversial
> > Creative Commons licenses and the horrible GFDL...]
> >
> 
> May you clarify this? AFAIK, only the clauses "nc" and "nd" (as well as
> their joint use) of the CC licenses are considered as non-free.

Well, the FTP masters seem to currently consider CC-by-v3.0 and
CC-by-sa-v3.0 as acceptable licenses for main. No other CC license has
been explicitly considered OK by the FTP masters, AFAICT.

However some people (most notably the undersigned!) disagree with the
FTP masters on this point: I personally think that even CC-by-v3.0 and
CC-by-sa-v3.0 should be considered as *non-free*.

If you want to read the gory details:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2010/01/msg00084.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/07/msg00124.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/03/msg00105.html

Moreover, license proliferation is bad, and should always be fought
(since it tends to balkanize the community with license
incompatibilities and makes everything more complicated and less
clear); the Creative Commons Project seems to have been a license
proliferation festival since its beginning:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2009/03/msg00145.html

> Regarding
> the GFDL, the obligation to include the full text of the license can be
> circumvented by adding the link to it. At least, I've seen it that way on
> some wikis.

The GFDL has many issues:
http://people.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml
http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/fdl.html
I acknowledge that the Project later decided to accept GFDL'ed
works, as long as they don't include unmodifiable parts:
http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001
But I disagree with this decision both because of the merits of the
decision (the GFDL has other issues, not only the ones related to
unmodifiable material) and because of the method (license analysis is a
"technical" evaluation requiring specific expertize: deciding by
general vote is not meaningful).
I still think that GFDL'ed works are *non-free*.

FLOSS Manuals decided to (almost entirely) switch from the GFDL to the
GPL, for reasons explained here:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Blog/LicenseChange
This is a case where a web site hosting free manuals "escaped" from the
GFDL.

> 
> The Free Art License (or in French Licence Art Libre) can be a very nice
> option, especially combined to CC-by-SA and GFDL.

The Free Art License seems to be *intended* to be a Free copyleft
one (but incompatible with GPLv2 and GPLv3).
There are some issues though that seem to make it fail.
Not a recommended option, IMHO.

Here you can read my detailed analysis:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2009/01/msg00119.html

> 
> Finally, I am not that familiar with the Expat license, so it would be great
> if you could detail its particularities a bit :)

It is sometimes also called the MIT license.
I prefer to call it the Expat license, since it's a less ambiguous name:
http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt

I hope that this clarifies.


-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt
 New GnuPG key, see the transition document!
. Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82  3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE


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Re: Licensing of D-W training session tutorials

[Holger Levsen]

Hi,

btw, kudos for the training sessions and the results from this!
(I also agree that publishing the material accompanied with a proper licence 
is a good thing, also that one licence should be chosen for everything.)

On Samstag, 11. Dezember 2010, Francesco Poli wrote:
> Well, the FTP masters seem to currently consider CC-by-v3.0 and
> CC-by-sa-v3.0 as acceptable licenses for main. No other CC license has
> been explicitly considered OK by the FTP masters, AFAICT.
>
> However some people (most notably the undersigned!) disagree with the
> FTP masters on this point: I personally think that even CC-by-v3.0 and
> CC-by-sa-v3.0 should be considered as *non-free*.

I'd appreciate if you could take your non-free vendetta elsewhere. Debian has 
decided that CC-3.0-by-sa and CC-3.0-by is free as in DFSG.

You're obviously free to think what you want, but people shoud be aware that 
you're known for extreme POVs on copyright and that you are also not a DD, so 
you dont really have much to say what Debian considers free or not.

Plus there is another free CC variant you didnt mention: 

http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0

> The GFDL has many issues:
[..]
> I acknowledge that the Project later decided to accept GFDL'ed
> works, as long as they don't include unmodifiable parts:
[...]
> But I disagree with this decision

As said above, you're free to have this opinion, and we are free to ignore you 
and point this out. For Debian matters the GFDL is free if the document 
released under it contains no invariant sections.


cheers,
Holger


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