Documentation License

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

We've tossed around the idea of using something other than
the GFDL for documentation before.  Changing licenses for
existing documentation is a huge pain, and not worth the
effort.

Our current documentation is mostly out of date.  Whatever
is up to date will likely not stay that way for Gnome 3.
And we're investigating Mallard, which involves an entirely
new way of approaching documentation.

All of these things combined mean that the effort of doing
new documents from scratch is minimal compared to what we'd
need to do to build off of our current documentation.

This means we can choose a new license.  Right now.

Without crafting our own license (which I think we should
avoid), we have three options:

1) Dual-license GFDL and CC-SA
2) Keep GFDL
3) Switch to CC-SA

Note that various groups, including Debian, objected to
certain portions of the version 2 CC licenses.  These
issues have apparently been cleared up.  Also note that
all CC licenses now have the attribution clause, so what
I'm referring to as CC-SA is effectively CC-BY-SA.

I don't really feel like rehashing all of the problems
we've had with the GFDL, but I'll go into it if anybody
is really interested.  Dual-licensing would give the most
freedom to distributors while still retaining copyleft.
On the other hand, it makes it more difficult for us to
use content from other sources.

There is also the issue of licensing code samples found
in documentation.  Luis Villa and I discussed the issue.
He initially recommended licensing code samples under
the CC0 license.  After talking to the SFLC, however,
he forwarded this recommendation to me:

"This documentation is licensed under [licenses].

As a special exception, the copyright holders give you permission to
copy, modify, and distribute the example code contained in this
documentation under the terms of your choosing, without restriction."

I'd like to get people's thoughts on licenses.

--
Shaun