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

[Chris Cormack]

On 4 November 2011 10:15, Mike Rylander <mrylander at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
Hmm playing devils advocate, do you think they will respect the NC
clause any more than they respected by BY-SA ?

Chris