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

[Mike Rylander]

On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 4:30 PM, Mike Rylander <mrylander at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>

I feel I should clarify the reasons for this decision.

We have, in recent memory, had documentation that we produced and own
the copyright on taken directly, rebranded to strip all mention of ESI
-- in the content, copyright notices, everything -- and reused without
any attribution.  This has happened more than once, and was not
addressed even after we specifically requested that the we simply be
credited.  Because our request for simple attribution has not been
respected, we felt it important to make a clear and strong statement
that, while everything we produce will be made available to the Open
Source community for use and reuse, we (all, not just ESI) have to put
thought explicitly into protecting our rights and being explicit about
what we will allow by default.

Again, because we own these works, we can license them to whomever we
wish under whatever license works for any given situation -- just ask,
and work with us, if there's no way for any particular group (DIG,
other vendors, etc) to use NC content based on the advice of council,
or without clarification of what constitutes commercial use based on
our understanding and intent.

Unfortunately, history has forced us to default to a stronger initial
license than we might otherwise have chosen.

-- 
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