[OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] Equinox license to DIG

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 02:52:51PM -0500, Mike Rylander wrote:
> After lively discussion here on the mailing lists, on IRC, in ESI's
> offices, and with the Software Freedom Conservancy, it is clear that
> some in the community believe we have unintentionally created a
> potential barrier to DIG using our documentation for the good of the
> community at large. This was never our intent, and while that may not
> necessarily be the opinion of the greater community, neither did we
> have any intent to divide the Evergreen community in any way.
> 
> From this point forward we will release all Equinox-produced
> documentation for new Evergreen features at the time that a Beta
> release including those features is made available by the community
> and announced on the general mailing list. This documentation will be
> released CC BY-SA. No future Equinox-produced Evergreen documentation
> will carry a CC BY-NC-SA license, and we are in the process of
> removing the -NC license from the documentation we've already
> published.  This decision is a reflection of our commitment to the
> Equinox Promise, in particular to maintaining transparency, and
> listening to and sharing with the community of which we are a part.
> 
> http://blog.esilibrary.com/2009/09/16/the-equinox-promise/
> 
> The feedback we received, in part, helped us come to this decision.
> We appreciate the open dialogue, and I hope this decision helps cement
> your faith in our commitment to the Evergreen community.
> 
> The new licensing information will read as follows:
> 
> Copyright: 2011 Equinox Software.
> Creative Commons License <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>
> This work by Equinox Software, Inc. is licensed under a Creative
> Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
> <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>.

This is great news! Thanks to everyone at Equinox for making this
decision.

For my part, I never questioned Equinox's commitment to the Evergreen
community, and I deeply apologize if that was the message that was
received. Equinox was formed by the core members of the Evergreen
community, has employed a number of additional important contributors to
the community over the years, and has always been generous supporters of
the project on many fronts. 

My intention was to ensure that the licensing terms were on solid legal
ground: as a member of the community, of the Evergreen Oversight Board,
and based on my experiences as an employee of a commercial company
contributing documentation to open source projects. Equinox's decision
to simply use the CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license meshes perfectly with
the DIG's choice of the same license and dissolves any concerns that I
had expressed. I applaud and thank Equinox for that decision!

Dan Scott