On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 17:56:53 +0100, "Charles Moir" wrote: > > So the question is what would be required in order to be classified as > free? The simplest way to start is to ship separate tar files for the separate pieces (as segregated by license). That is, (once it exists), a self-contained xaralx tar file containing only GPL source code, then xaralx-samples (or whatever) under an appropriate license, xaralx-help under perhaps another, etc. That way, any organization has a much easier time choosing the pieces with acceptable license terms. > And thinking about it, the same point applies to documentation, > (e.g. help), demo movies as well as the example graphic designs. One question here is, "Whose definition of 'free' do you want to meet?". Particularly in the area of documentation, there has been some friction in the free software community over what license is best for it. I'll approach "free" as defined by the Debian Free Software Guidelines, since I like that definition, and that definition has practical consequences for XaraLX adoption, (such as "can packages be uploaded to Debian main). Here are some options, sorted in order of my personal recommendation, (best option first): 1) Use GPL for documentation This is attractive for simplicity's sake, and it allows the documentation to be used anywhere the code is used. Something to consider is that the line between code and documentation is not always sharp. For example, a contributor to some under-documented functionality might look at the code and want to copy-paste a comment that a programmer left there. The other directions is also likely. This behavior is obviously legitimate when GPL applies to both software and documentation, but can be much trickier to resolve given any other scheme. 2) Use GFDL *with no invariant sections* The GFDL ( http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html ) was created by the Free Software Foundation and has been used for many FSF-created works of documentation. This license has been the source of a fair amount of contention lately, and might be avoided because of that. However, Debian recently determined by a project-binding vote (http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001) that the GFDL is a free license *if* the licensing does not create any unmodifiable sections. 3) Use an appropriate Creative Commons license (but perhaps nothing exists?) I'm hesitant to recommend these as a class, but I do think the question here should be informed by the existence of the Creative Commons licenses: http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001 An advantage of the Creative Commons approach is that it's easier for an author to select a license that fits his/her desires. A disadvantage is that most of the licenses have clauses that make them definitely non-free. For example, the non-commercial and no-derivatives options are obviously non-free according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. As for the other CC licenses, the debian-legal mailing list published a statement that considers all of them to be non-free: http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html As that page says, it is "not binding" but can "provide some basis for the Debian project to make decisions about individual packages". I'm not aware that anything like a project-wide vote has occurred with respect to CC licenses, (as it did for the GFDL). -Carl
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