[csw-maintainers] [POLICY] opencsw-policy: The copyright notice

[Philip Brown]

On 3/1/11, Peter FELECAN <pfelecan at opencsw.org> wrote:
> Philip Brown <phil at bolthole.com> writes:
>
>> it was not one of us 3, sure. but someone did.
>>
>> Presumably, we are still having these discussions on "the maintainers
>> list", for exactly this purpose? So other maintainers can read what
>> we're saying, and also freely add comments?
>>
>> So.. are "we 3" going to pay attention to those comments, or just ignore
>> them?
>
> Alright. I re-read the thread, please do it also. William proposed
> CDDL. You proposed to not have a license, neither an abstract. Sebastian
> and Ben agreed to have GPL. Finally, what's your point?
>

So there we go. I validly reported "someone suggested a difference license".
Now how about you answer my question of,
 are "we 3" going to pay attention to those comments[both in this
specific case,and in the general case], or just ignore them?

Your prior message seemed to imply that since we are the people who
formally volunteered for the policy board, we can ignore input from
others.
(In which case I would ask, why are we discussing policy issues on the
maintainers list then?)


My opinion is that we should pay attention to them, both in the
specific, and the general case. What's your, and Maciej's opinion on
this?


(For the "specific instance" . someone has raised the suggestion of an
alternative license. there have been no discussions on relative merits
of GPL vs CDDL.
To just pick a license for our documentation, based on only the
handful of people who have spoken up so far, that is going to apply
for all our docs, for a Very Long Time, without any analysis of which,
if any, is better... strikes me as.. rash.


PS; to address someone's comment of "what about if someone wants to
'use our documentation work' for future purposes and other
projects"... there is also the possibility of simply making our
documentation fully "public domain".

So, possibilities that have been now mentioned are:

a) none
b) GPL
c) CDDL
d) public domain

Anyone want to state *why* one is particularly better than the other
choices, in their opinion?

It would probably help to also state up front, what the perceived
benefit of having a copyright notice is. The only one I have seen so
far is, "[to clearly allow people to use our documentation for other
projectsj]".

If that is the only goal, then it seems we want to be as permissive as
possible. The option that fits "most permissive" from the above list,
is "public domain".