[Bf-docboard] OCL vs FDL

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi Felix,

> Never heard of that - you _must_ be able to sell the thing itself that
> is subject to the license if the license is to be regarded as free by
> the FSF.  A license that says "no" at this point is non-free.

Yes, this is a clear FSF requirement.
However, the fact that you are allowed to 'sell' GNU GPL code itself is 
not very useful. You can only do that within the GPL license; allowing 
the purchaser to give it all away without charge.
Then what's the value of selling something that you allow anyone to give 
away for free? I think that specific "freedom" is pretty useless, except 
for the original creator (=copyright holder), who can do this anyway 
because he owns it.

Apart from this issue, the OCL has a lot of freedom built-in, and is 
copylefted as well. The designers of the OCL wanted to devise a license 
that could accompany the GNU GPL for non-coding projects.
I don't understand why they didnt start the discussion with FSF on this. 
It could have been easily solved by changing the wording a bit I guess.

> Use any free (software) documentation license you want (write one if you
> really need - but I wouldn't advise you to do that before looking at the
> already available options).  But you still have to proove to me that the
> OCL is free, otherwise I _cannot_ work on the Blender documentation if
> it is to be OCL-licensed.

Why not turn around the challenge, and prove to us in what way OCL would 
limit our (and your) freedom, and why that isn't acceptable?
Although I respect the goals of the FSF to create a 100% 'Free' system, 
it's not the goal of the BF, nor the incentive of most people who will 
contribute to its projects.

> Maybe licenses are the only way to restrict the range of copyright power
> of the copyright holder.

I made the copyright statement to react to something Stefano said 
before, that people will transfer copyright to the BF. That's not a 
correct statement according to me. Not with OCL, BAL, FDL, or whatever 
license we will choose.

> I don't know whether we can get a license that both the FSF and O'Reilly
> can agree upon.  There have been some tensions between these two...

Yah, I found out in the meantime... I've also mailed the creator of the 
OCL license with questions. :-)

-Ton-

_____________________________________________________
Ton Roosendaal | ton@blender.org | Blender Foundation
Amsterdam | The Netherlands |  http://www.blender.org