Re: Modification of reference material
On Wed, 14 Apr 1999 23:58:44 +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
>On Sun, Apr 11, 1999 at 09:23:23PM +0000, Arnoud 'Galactus' Engelfriet wrote:
>> I've looked at the debian license, but it only seems to cover programs, not
>> documentation like this. Is there a need to make reference materials also
>> "free" in the sense of the license? If so, that would mean that Debian
>> couldn't for example include a local mirror of the RFC documents. I can
>> understand this requirement for manpages and such, since the modifications to
>> the source could mean a modification to the documentation, but for a
>> standalone reference document?
>
>There is no real consensus about this among the Debian developers. I want to
>encourage you to comply with the DFSG even for references, eg, documents
>which are not bound to a particular software.
The essential difference between software and documentation IMO is that for
the former, it's more important what it does than what it has internally. If
I can rewrite your code so it does the function better or safer, there
shouldn't be a problem. If I rewrite the code and make it more buggy, people
will notice and stop using my version. But with documentation, it's very hard
to distinguish between the good and the bad changes.
In our case, the reference (on HTML and CSS) will be read by people to see
what is and what isn't permitted, and which elements and attributes you
should use in which case. If someone else adds wrong information, people will
not be able to see this is wrong because they trust our reference to be
correct (based on the reputation the WDG has in the Web authoring community).
>RMS suggested in such case, it would be a reasonable requirement for
>derivative works (and adding banners and such IS creating a derived work in
>my book) to do one or more of the following:
>
>+ change the name.
>+ remove a non-technical introductory chapter, section or paragraph.
>+ clearly document which changes were made.
I'm not sure how to apply these requirements to our case. If someone modifies
a file in the reference, then he can document that in a changelog, but few
people will check that when they read the file. Indicating that in the file
is possible, but I'm afraid that won't make the reference any more readable.
If I remember correctly, the Mozilla license allows people to modify the
source code of the free Netscape version, but only the people at Netscape may
distribute the program as "Netscape." Similarly, the TeX typesetting program
is public domain, but may only be distributed as TeX if the program passes a
certain test. Are these licenses considered free? Then perhaps a license like
Netscape's would be appropriate for this type of documentation.
Greetings,
Arnoud
--
\/ Arnoud "Galactus" Engelfriet - galactus@stack.nl This space
5th year Business & Computing Science student left blank
URL: http://www.stack.nl/~galactus/ PGP: 0x416A1A35 intentionally.
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