[Pkg-doc-linux-devel] missing HOWTOs

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Fri 30 Jul 04,  5:37 PM, Frank Lichtenheld said:
> On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 08:06:05AM -0400, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> > Dear Debian LDP Maintainers,
> > 
> > I'm the author of the:
> > 
> >    * Linux Gamers' HOWTO
> >    * Debian-Jigdo HOWTO
> > 
> > They don't appear to be in doc-linux-text (2004.07-1) anymore.
> 
> They are actually in doc-linux-nonfree-text since 2004.04-1:
> 
> * The following licenses were found non-free by the
>   debian-legal team: OPL 1.0, OSL 1.1, CC-Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0
>   Moving the corresponding HOWTOs to the non-free packages:
>     Debian-Jigdo Linux-Gamers-HOWTO Adv-Routing-HOWTO Apache-Overview-HOWTO
>     Battery-Powered Cable-Modem DHCP Lex-YACC-HOWTO NFS-HOWTO
>     Online-Troubleshooting-HOWTO MMBase-Inst-HOWTO User-Group-HOWTO
> (from the changelog)
> 
> A rationale can be found at
> http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/dls-007-osl
> 
> There are ongoing discussions on debian-legal about documentation
> licenses and which Debian could accept as free. Therefor I don't
> currently contact authors very actively about their licenses because I don't
> really know what to propose (most documentation licenses actually
> suffer from the same problems, like the usual attribution clauses).
> 
> (For documentation bundled with software it is usually recommended
> to use the same license for the whole work, but that isn't the
> situation for HOWTOs)
> 
> Gruesse,
> -- 
> Frank Lichtenheld <djpig@debian.org>
> www: http://www.djpig.de/

Hi Frank,

Thanks for getting back to me.  It's very disheartening to hear that
Debian currently considers the OSL non-free.  IANAL, but I would think
that Apache would be non-free too, by the same token.

I'll consider changing the licenses to the GPL, but I have to admit -- I
*really* like the OSL's termination for patent action clause.

Frank, has anybody thought of contacting Larry Rosen about this?  I've
met the man once, and he's a very reasonable, very intelligent, and very
well thought out person.  He also happens to care very much about the
issue of free software.

Perhaps his input would be useful to your discussion.

Maybe Debian's input would be useful in improving the OSL.

Pete

-- 
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