[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] [OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] Evergreen documentation

[Mike Rylander]

On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Dan Scott <dan at coffeecode.net> wrote:
> Hi Sally!
>
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 3:54 PM, Sally Fortin <sfortin at esilibrary.com> wrote:
>> Friends and Colleagues,
>>
>> Many in the Evergreen community have expressed a desire for more
>> documentation describing new features in Evergreen.  Others have requested
>> that those who write documentation produce it in more formats, including
>> asciidoc.  ESI trainers and developers have been thinking about how to help
>> the Evergreen community meet its documentation needs and, to that end, are
>> making some changes to the way that we produce documentation.
>>
>> In every new development contract, the cost is inclusive of basic end user
>> documentation, written by our trainers, that will be released to the
>> Evergreen community.  If possible, we will release documentation in advance
>> of the scheduled software release.  We will publish the documentation on the
>> ESI website in both asciidoc and HTML formats to make new documentation
>> accessible to the community.  Community members or DIG members can adapt the
>> documentation to community or local needs in accordance with the CC-BY-NC-SA
>> license that is listed on each document.  Finally, we'll make an
>> announcement to the community every time new documentation is available for
>> download.  You can also check our blog or website for updates on
>> documentation.
>
> This sounds really great, but I have to note that the NC
> ("Non-commercial") clause is problematic. It is in some measure
> incompatible with CC-BY-SA; it restricts the use of the documentation
> significantly such that the DIG would probably not be able to
> integrate the Equinox contributions as no commercial use of the
> Evergreen documentation would be allowed - and the definition of what
> commericial use is is very fuzzy.
>
> For example, if a different company that offers Evergreen support
> distributes a copy of the Evergreen docs as part of their Evergreen
> support package, that could easily be defined as "commercial use"; or
> training documentation derived from the Evergreen docs could be
> defined as "commercial use".
>
> Hopefully this is just an oversight and the real intention is to
> release the Equinox-derived documentation under the CC-BY-SA license.

It's not an oversight.

We can, certainly, grant a differently flavored license to the DIG
(well, the foundation, I guess) specifically, or provide explicit
clarification on points of concern regarding commercial use, if that's
the only way DIG will be able to make use of the documentation we
produce.  But unless a licensing exception is requested (and, really,
all it takes is an email explaining why) we'll be defaulting to the
less BSD-like -NC license.


-- 
Mike Rylander
 | Director of Research and Development
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  miker at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com