[Bf-docboard] License decision

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi everyone,

This is what we'll do.

We'll adopt 2 licenses for now, being:

OCL: by default, for all content including texts, gfx, etc
BAL: in exceptional cases, when an author insists on that

The key difference between OCL and BAL is that the latter includes a 
clear original copyright statement, mentioning also that a third party 
can contact the original artist to obtain additional rights.
The OCL allows third parties to distribute OpenContent freely, and 
charge a fee for the copies as well. Both licenses are 'copylefted'.
OpenContent was designed to be compatible with the philosophy at gnu.org 
and opensource.org. I will establish communication with OpenContent.org 
to verify it.

All (old) content from NaN - and that's a huge database - will be 
available as OCL. Including website demos, articles, FAQs, tutorials, 
etc. I am also now discussing the rights with the Manual 2.0 publisher, 
and it is likely that we have the right to publish a downloadable 
version. In that case, I will make a complete downloadable version 
available for sale, and allow the DocBoard to use the text and images 
(not the design) for integration in the open manual project.

About the FDL discussion: here are the reasons not to accept it now:
1. It is too complex, most people don't understand it easily
2. It's not an accepted standard (yet)
3. It was designed for books only. It doesn't include other 'content', 
like artistic contributions, .blend files, movies, pictures, articles.

However, I will continue researching this and discuss it with some 
people to get the full insight on the topic. This will be communicated 
with the docboard. If, during the next months, a better understanding 
and insight has been reached on going for FDL for the 'book' project, I 
can contact all contributors to the manual project and ask them for 
permission to change the license. Being a representative from NaN, I can 
do that for the NaN content myself.

This might sound like a weak work-around, but I can't make a motivated 
decision for FDL now. If it can't be changed in the future, bad luck!

Regards,

-Ton-

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