http://iquaid.org/2009/01/06/the-outside-and-inside-of-documentation-or-why-arent-you-publishing-on-the-fedora-wiki/#comment-2960 I fully understand Thilo's points, and in many ways he is correct. Would there be value in pursuing additional licensing for Fedora Documentation? To be clear -- we really want to trust our lawyers on this one, so in the end, what they recommend or require is surely the way to go. But we can go a long way toward influencing their opinion on the community value of a licensing decision, outside of the legal value. In a nutshell, here is why we have not used the CC or GNU FDL in Fedora Docs: * CC has no warranty protection clause. This is important in countries such as the US; we put out technical content that could blow up someone's computer if they misuse it or we edit it incorrectly, we don't want to be liable for that. But perhaps we can use a CC and add a "NO WARRANTY" clause? Or, add the "NO WARRANTY" clause to the document itself so it is modifiable by anyone willing to take on the increased risk? * The GNU Free Documentation License 1.0 (FDL) is notoriously difficult to use, unless you use it with strict guidelines on how not to trip yourself up; this is essentially Debian's approach AIUI. Thilo's example of not being able to pull in GNOME documentation because of not being able to mix FDL in to OPL content is true. However, when we did use the FDL and pursued blending in GNOME content, we faced the various FDL requirements. They are not hard to maintain, just ... tedious. I was happier linking out the GNOME Documentation Guidelines rather than pulling them directly in to our own guide; less to maintain. I hear the new FDL is addressing these downfalls (issues with using invariant sections, cover texts, enormous license and attribution notices, etc.) The OPL is not an abandoned license AFAIK. Even if it is no longer maintained, it is not requiring maintenance. It is linked from the front of the active http://opencontent.org. (The opencontent.org/wiki is under a CC license, fwiw ...) Regardless of all that, if Red Hat wants to continue using the OPL, perhaps Fedora Docs could dual-license content. That way we could blend in GNU FDL content from e.g. GNOME, and do it so it doesn't actually mix with our dual-licensed content for our OPL-preferring downstream. I've been involved with Docs licensing for a long time, and I'm willing to let my opinion evolve. I think that Thilo is making good points mixed with some inaccuracies and an overly strong tone. Perhaps it is time to reconsider Fedora content licensing from the stand point of the community itself. - Karsten -- Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener http://quaid.fedorapeople.org AD0E0C41
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