Re: PHP documentation licence

On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 11:59:32AM +0200, Derick Rethans wrote: > On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Joe Orton wrote: > > > On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 11:35:29AM +0200, Gabor Hojtsy wrote: > > > >Hi folks - I noticed that the new PHP documentation licence elects to > > > >use this option of the OPL: > > > > > > > > Distribution of substantively modified versions of this document > > > > is prohibited without the explicit permission of the copyright > > > > holder. > > > > > > > >This is a significant restriction over the previous licence, and is not > > > >in the spirit (if not the letter) of the Open Source Definition/Debian > > > >Free Software Guidelines: that modification is unrestricted is an > > > >important part of free software. > > > > > > > >Would you consider removing this option? > > > > > > Is the documentation software? > > > > Obviously not, though I find it hard to convince myself that the > > principles of free software should not also apply to free > > documentation--hence the question. > > The idea why this is in is that we don't want other people making money > of our work, without having to contribute their updates/changes back to > the project. I don't see anything wrong with this statement. That's great, but the licence option goes so much further than that - it restricts modifications to those which are approved by the copyright holders, or may be defined as "not substantive", whatever that means. There is no "freedom to fork" any more - that's the central issue here. It's a similar issue with the GNU FDL when an "Invariant" section is used. My understanding is that Debian also consider such a licence restriction unacceptable (for the main distribution). > Also, the > documentation was former under GPL which was and is a totally WRONG > licence for documentation. No arguments there! :) Regards, joe