[Textbook-l] License issues

[Daniel Mayer]

Jimbo wrote:
>This whole discussion makes #1 [GFDL only] 
>seem like our only recourse.

That's what I thought... Which is a real shame because at first glance dual 
licensing seemed like such a neat idea. But if we cannot easily use Wikipedia 
as a text resource then that would hamper the project. 

>Let's discuss this for a few days, and then 
>I'll chat with RMS and Lessig about it.  

That sounds like a good idea. 

>I know RMS is going to say "why don't you 
>just use GNU FDL?"  because part of the point 
>of GNU licenses is just this sort of 'viral' spread 
>that forces people to stick with GNU licenses.

I'm not so sure RMS is so religious when it comes to the GNU FDL though.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html states:

:Licenses for Other Types of Works
:
:We believe that published software and documentation should be free software 
:and free documentation. We recommend making all sorts of educational and 
:reference works free also, using free documentation licenses such as the GNU 
:Free Documentation License (GNU FDL). 

Note especially:

:For other kinds of works, we recommend you consider the licenses proposed by 
:Creative Commons. 

>But maybe I can convince him to release (someday?) 
>an FDL 2.0 that is a lot more general and easy to 
>understand.

Or simply a FDL that requires derivative works to be licensed under one of a 
select list of similar viral copyleft licenses like the Creative Commons 
Share Alike license. That would make it possible for us to import GFDL only 
text into the textbook projects and then downstream users of the textbook 
text could choose between GFDL or Creative Commons Share Alike. 

But I'm not sure if that would be legal. 

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav