RE: Last call for the Cookbook express!

--- "Neil W. Van Dyke" <[email protected]> wrote:

> If the main goal of the Cookbook wiki is to promote the
> use of Scheme,
> then I currently suspect that a viral open license
> reserving no special
> print rights is the best fit.

Well it depends.  The online Scheme community is made up of
the most avid users.  They are the ones who will learn the
language by themselves, and develop packages and contribute
to the community without prompting.  There are significant
numbers of Scheme users who don't belong to the online
community and likewise for potential users.  I totally
agree that an online resource is a great thing and the
current licence aims to keep that resource open to everyone
BUT the only way to reach the people who aren't part of the
online community is get something made out of dead trees
into a nearby bookstore.  That is the only reason for
considering publication (and the only reason for not
self-publishing -- major publishers have major
distribution).


> 2. Without restrictions on print publication, some
> high-impact publisher
>    who would otherwise be willing to produce a Cookbook
> adaptation that
>    would promote Scheme, will decline to.
> 
>    (Counter: But maybe the high-impact publisher
> satisfied if the
>    license were merely less viral to whatever editing for
> print is done.
>    Or maybe a high-impact publisher would only decline if
> a set of other
>    publishers was distributing a Cookbook adaptation
> widely -- in which
>    case the high-impact publisher is not needed so much.)


A data point:

http://www.rubycentral.com/book/

Extracted from the book "Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic
Programmer's Guide"
Copyright © 2001 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. This
material may be distributed...subject to...the Open
Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is
presently available at
http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/)).

Distribution of substantively modified versions of this
document is prohibited without the explicit permission of
the copyright holder.

Distribution of the work or derivative of the work in any
standard (paper) book form is prohibited unless prior
permission is obtained from the copyright holder. 



I think the current CopyRight restriction on compilation is
too broad (and badly written).  If we restricted it to
print that should be enough.


> 3. Without restrictions on print publication, someone
> might produce a poor-quality Cookbook adaptation 

>    (Counter: But many popular languages have poor-quality
> books published on them...)

I am a bit concerned by this.  The 1st book is normally a
good one; the dross usually follows when the market has
expanded.


> By the way, could someone summarize the current rationale
> for LGPL over
> GFDL?

Various people have griped about it:

  http://people.debian.org/~ajt/gfdl.txt


Hmmm...I'll have a think about what we actually want to
allow and see what licence fits.

Noel

=====
Email: noelwelsh <at> yahoo <dot> com
AIM: noelhwelsh

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