[OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] Licensing for Evergreen Documentation - Call for Input

[Karen Collier]

The Free Software Foundation wrote (at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html): 
Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.0 license (a.k.a. CC-BY-SA) 

This is a copyleft free license that is good for artistic and entertainment works, and educational works. Please don't use it for software or documentation, since it is incompatible with the GNU GPL and with the GNU FDL. I don't believe they go into any more detail on why it's incompatible. Any guesses? 

Thanks, 
Karen 

----- "Steve Wills" <steve.wills at lyrasis.org> wrote: 
> 
> 

I agree that of the licenses we looked at CCSA seemed to make me feel the happiest, a most subjective argument, I know. I am curious what the argument is that supports CCSA being incompatible with GPL’ed software? 



If it is merely a concern about snippets of code being re-licensed, couldn’t a disclaimer cover that? “snippet reprinted for documentation purposes only, all GPL restrictions apply?” etc. etc. 



Stev3 

p.s. hi KGS J 


> 

From: open-ils-documentation-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org [mailto:open-ils-documentation-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Karen Schneider 
> Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 8:29 PM 
> To: Karen Collier 
> Cc: open-ils-dev; open-ils-general; docs; Public Open-ILS documentation discussion 
> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] Licensing for Evergreen Documentation - Call for Input 



The Fedora Project is using Creative Commons licensing for its documentation (as do Wikipedia and the Gnome project). See: http://lwn.net/Articles/355546/ 
> 
> Cheers, 
> 
> -- Karen G. Schneider 


On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Karen Collier < kcollier at kent.lib.md.us > wrote: 

As you may already be aware, the Evergreen Documentation Interest Group is working toward creating a set of "Official" community driven documentation for Evergreen, using the DocBook standard to produce both HTML and PDF versions, as well as distributing DocBook XML files for customization purposes. 
> 
> We've been discussing licensing issues for this documentation effort, but wanted to get input on this important issue from the larger Evergreen community. Specifically, we're trying to decide which license or licenses to apply to our documentation efforts. It seems the general feeling is that we'd like a copyleft license, but which one remains to be determined. 
> 
> The candidates we've considered include Creative Commons Share-Alike (CCSA), GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), and the GNU General Public License (GPL). We've heard from various sources that the CCSA and the FDL are not compatible with the GPL (under which the Evergreen Software is licensed), which would seem to make them unusable for our purposes. Do you agree or disagree with this conclusion? 
> 
> The GNU GPL would seem to be compatible with itself, but it's my understanding that it is intended for use with software, not documentation. But perhaps it could be used for our documentation anyway? 
> 
> So... thoughts from the community? What licenses do other open source projects you know of use for their documentation? What license(s) do you think we should license Evergreen documentation under, and why? 
> 
> Any input would be appreciated. 
> 
> Thanks, 
> Karen Collier 
> Evergreen Documentation Interest Group Co-Facilitator 
> 
> -- 
> Karen Collier 
> Public Services Librarian 
> Kent County Public Library 
> 408 High Street 
> Chestertown, MD 21620 
> 410-778-3636 



-- 
Karen Collier 
Public Services Librarian 
Kent County Public Library 
408 High Street 
Chestertown, MD 21620 
410-778-3636 
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