[scribus] the docs license

Peter Linnell plinnell at scribus.net
Fri Apr 13 06:34:08 UTC 2012


On 04/12/2012 02:24 PM, Craig Bradney wrote:
> On 4/12/12 11:22 PM, Murray Strome wrote:
>> I have looked at this issue before. I cannot understand why you do not try to change the documents license to Creative Commons.  While the GPL is fine for Free Open Source Software (FOSS), in my opinion, it is far too onerous for documentation. In particular, it requires a full copy of the GPL to be included whereas CC only requires a link to the website. Including the full GPL for a 300 page book is fine, but for a 10-30 page tutorial, this is ridiculous!!!
>>
>> Even if a complete rewrite of the documentation were to be required (and I may be able to help with the English version if that is desired), I really think you should get away from the GPL.
>>
>
> Its not GPL'd.. its OPL'd
>
> Craig
>

As the original doc writer and selector for the docs license, I did a 
careful survey of available licenses.

CC did not exist at the time and none of them still do not reflect my 
exact intent with the license.

I chose OPL, as it did two things:

Permitted free distribution and alteration.

Prevented a commercial interest from benefiting from our benevolent 
efforts aka reprinting commercially our docs without permission. My 
desire was that any documentation commercially or otherwise would 
benefit the project.

That it is not free enough for Debian legal folks is their issue, not 
mine. Docs are not code and should not be licensed under the same kind 
of copyright/license.

Thanks,

Peter



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