Stefano - > > > Do you think it is possible to relicense the manual under a different > > > license? (The best possible is usually the same that applies to the > > > source code of the program itself). How many parts are taken from > > > Oualline's book? Is it possible to rewrite them? We are of course > > > willing to help in that, but maybe we are luckily enough that no more > > > parts took from the book are still in the help ... > > > > It sounds like you are splitting hairs. As far as I know the OPL is a > > free license, since it allows distribution and modification. What part > > of the OPL makes it non-free? > > The OPL (meaning in this mail Open Publication License, since the same > acronym is used for the Open Content License) is at the very minimum a > license whose freeness is debatable. A few fact to argument this. > > * The Free Software Foundation itself consider the license as a free > documentation license ONLY IF none of the License Options are > exercised. I don't know what is the case of the Vim documentation. > See http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/
None of the options is used. Thus according to FSF this is a free license. > * The license is not OSI approved (it is not listed on > http://www.opensource.org/licenses/) Don't see how that matters. There are probably dozens of other organisatiosn that don't list it. > * The debian-legal as determined it as non DFSG-free (see > > http://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses#head-add2e754f3a906f07e4ff1c050a2548f04ef4cbe) Debian people tend to spend more time on splitting hairs than others. > This latter point is motivated by two, IMO minor, points (the first and > the third of > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/03/msg00226.html), and by an > additional major point, namely the license fails to pass the "dissident > test" (see http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html). The reason is > that every modification to a document published under this license must > be owned by an identified author. This is the verbatim text of the test: > > # The Dissident test. > > Consider a dissident in a totalitarian state who wishes to share a > modified bit of software with fellow dissidents, but does not wish to > reveal the identity of the modifier, or directly reveal the > modifications themselves, or even possession of the program, to the > government. Any requirement for sending source modifications to anyone > other than the recipient of the modified binary---in fact any forced > distribution at all, beyond giving source to those who receive a copy > of the binary---would put the dissident in danger. For Debian to > consider software free it must not require any such excess > distribution. This is a bogus point in my opinion. Since copyright is automatically given by creating something, every text should have the author mentioned and/or is automatically associated to it. Thus this is actually implied in every created work, no matter if it is mentioned in the license or not, since law goes above a license. The solution is to use a fantasy name for the author. There is nothing to stop someone from doing that, as far as I know. And the license used is irrelevant. > While I think (but this is a personal opinion) that the minor points > could be ignored for inclusion of the vim documentation in the debian > distribution, I don't think the latter aspect could be. We would > probably be forced to remove the vim documentation from the debian > distribution, moving it to non-free :-((( I think that's your problem. Requiring authors to use exactly the license you approve of is actually close to dictatorial behavior. Please consider losing the rules a bit, so that you can actually claim to have a "free" operating system. > Since I don't want that ... while on the Debian side I'm trying to get > comments from the people responsible of accepting stuff into the archive > ... on the "Bram" side I would like to know how hard it would be to > relicense the manual under a different license. > > Could you please comment on that? In my opinion the docs go under a free license, I don't see a reason to change it. And I actually can't change it, since I used text from Steve Oualline's book in the user manual, and that text uses this license. - Bram -- hundred-and-one symptoms of being an internet addict: 256. You are able to write down over 250 symptoms of being an internet addict, even though they only asked for 101. /// Bram Moolenaar -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www.Moolenaar.net \\\ /// sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\ \\\ download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org /// \\\ help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org /// -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
