Re: Documentation License

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

Hi Mario,

You didn't reply to the list.  Nothing here looks really
personal, so I'm assuming it was a mistake.  I'm replying
on list.  Hope you don't mind.

On Sun, 2009-04-26 at 18:41 +0200, Mario Blättermann wrote:
> Am Samstag, den 25.04.2009, 20:02 -0500 schrieb Shaun McCance:
> 
> > On the other hand, it makes it more difficult for us to
> > use content from other sources.
> 
> In my mind, documentation doesn't use really much content from other
> sources. Which sources do you target in this case?

The two most likely sources I can think of are downstream
documentation and Wikipedia.  In the case of downstream,
if we dual-license, our distributors can distribute their
modifications under only one of the licenses, restricting
our ability to slurp improvements from them.

Wikipedia is not likely to be useful for basic help stuff,
but it could be a source for conceptual information, such
as tutorials or extended reading.  Wikipedia is currently
under the GFDL, but through some trick of the GFDL 3, all
old content will soon be GFDL+CC-SA dual-licensed, and new
content with likely just be CC-SA.  (Luis, please correct
me if I've gotten this wrong.)

> > 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.
> 
> Shouldn't it be possible to use the license from the application itself
> for these samples, mostly GPL?

That would make our developer documentation only useful
to a subset of free software developers.

--
Shaun