[scribus] the docs license

[Murray Strome]

            OOPS!!!  I guess I had never heard of OPL and just read it as GPL (which I probably confused with GNU Free Documentation License, which is/was used for a lot of Scribus Documentation, in particular for the original tutorial "Getting Started With Scribus"). The GFDL has the same problem as GPL in that a full copy of the licence must be included in the document, which is why Nigel Ridley and I wanted to use the CC licence for our updated tutorial (http://www.oliveroot.net/Scribus/Getting_Started_With_Scribus_2008/), and to which Niyam Bhushan, the author of the earlier version, agreed. In my opinion, the GFDL has a lot of other legalistic problems which are not present in either CC or OPL.

I have just looked at the OPL, and from a first glance (despite broken links), it appears to be quite reasonable. It is not as complete as the CC in that there don't appear to be as many options. However, it does seem to be simpler, which is a plus and had we known about it at the time we prepared the updated tutorial, we likely would have used it. Like CC, only a simple statement and a link to the OPL website need to be included in the document.

Murray

"Peter Linnell" <plinnell at scribus.net> wrote:
"Scribus User Mailing List" <scribus at lists.scribus.net>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!!!
>> 
> 
> 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





--- On Fri, 4/13/12, scribus-request at lists.scribus.net <scribus-request at lists.scribus.net> wrote:

From: scribus-request at lists.scribus.net <scribus-request at lists.scribus.net>
Subject: scribus Digest, Vol 49, Issue 27
To: scribus at lists.scribus.net
Received: Friday, April 13, 2012, 5:00 AM

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Today's Topics:

   1.  Technical Drawing (Ray Risely)
   2. Re:  Technical Drawing (michael crane)
   3. Re:  Scribus as a Technical Drawing Tool (Peter Linnell)
   4. Re:  Scribus as a Technical Drawing Tool (Alexandre Prokoudine)
   5. Re:  the docs license (Peter Linnell)
   6. Re:  Technical Drawing (Sveinn ? Felli)
   7. Re:  the docs license (Meho R.)
   8. Re:  scribus Digest, Vol 49, Issue 24 (Anke Lange)
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