Hi, Alex!
I'd like to request a different choice of name for the SPDX license tag
used by the man-pages documents affected by this change. It's my
understanding that there is freedom to make such a choice because the
proposed tag does not yet appear in the SPDX license list[1].
I have a few reasons: (1) the license tag says "Verbatim" which implies
to me that permission to modify the document is excluded--but it is not;
(2) with the exception of the paragraph about the kernel and system
libraries being in flux, this license appears identical to what I (and
some folks in Debian) started terming the "traditional GNU documentation
license) about 18 years ago when debate over the GNU FDL was raging[2];
this was in fact the license the GNU project used for most of its
documentation before it promulgated the FDL. As far as I know, this
license text has no earlier provenance; I would appreciate correction on
this point. Thirdly, since that time, the GNU project has christened
the license terms for many of its web pages the "GNU Verbatim Copying
License"[3]. You can perhaps see how this might generate confusion.
Because the warranty-disclaiming third paragraph about the Linux kernel
is unique to the Linux man-pages project and the term "verbatim" implies
too much restriction in my view, I envision a few alternatives.
man-pages-doc
man-pages-document-copyleft
man-pages-copyleft
Any of the above could be further prefixed with "Linux-" to reinforce
the specificity to this project, of course. If pressed for a
preference, I reckon I would pick "Linux-man-pages-copyleft".
I feel that the "VERBATIM" string is similarly misleading, but it's not
presented as an SPDX license tag, and I see that its use is already
well-entrenched. I expected to find something like a sed script in the
man-pages scripts/ directory that manipulated lines matching
'%%%LICENSE_START(' but failed to. Perhaps a convenient new moniker
could be adopted to supersede "VERBATIM" in this context, once the SPDX
tagging initiative is complete?
Regards,
Branden
At 2021-09-05T15:25:41+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> To simplify understanding which license applies to each file,
> let's use SPDX markings, which are simple, informative, and
> commonly used in many projects.
> Let's also follow REUSE <https://reuse.software/> conventions.
[...]
> diff --git a/man8/sln.8 b/man8/sln.8
> index 341cf9afb..0a2f04844 100644
> --- a/man8/sln.8
> +++ b/man8/sln.8
> @@ -1,26 +1,5 @@
> -.\" Copyright (c) 2013 by Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@xxxxxxxxx>
> -.\"
> -.\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM)
> -.\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
> -.\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
> -.\" preserved on all copies.
> -.\"
> -.\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
> -.\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
> -.\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
> -.\" permission notice identical to this one.
> -.\"
> -.\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
> -.\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
> -.\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
> -.\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not
> -.\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
> -.\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
> -.\" professionally.
> -.\"
> -.\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
> -.\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
> -.\" %%%LICENSE_END
> +.\" SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2013, Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@xxxxxxxxx>
> +.\" SPDX-License-Identifier: Verbatim-man-pages
> .\"
> .TH SLN 8 2021-03-22 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
> .SH NAME
> --
> 2.33.0
>
[1] https://spdx.org/licenses/
[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/09/msg00264.html
[3] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#VerbatimCopying
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
