Re: Licences

I am following your conversation, and I feel a bit sad that the final book may
be non-free for the end-user (ie the buyer of the book). I find it is not a good
incentive when you are not sure that the book will be 100% free-as-in-freedom.

Also, a common practice when licensing programming books is to release the whole
book under a free documentation license such as the FDL, and license again the
source code itself under a free software license such as the LGPL. It would
avoid the mentioned problem to apply a free documentation license to source
code, making it non-free code.

On,
> | * While you own the copyright to your own material, the people named
> |   in SchematicsEditorsGroup retain the copyright to the compilation,
> |   that is, to the Cookbook web site as a book.  SchematicsEditorsGroup
> |   has the right to print, publish, distribute, and sell copies of the
> |   book, and works derived from the book, in printed form and in
> |   electronic media, to translate it, and to license others to do so,
> |   for the duration of the copyright in the book, in all languages,
> |   throughout the world.
>
> 1. For clarity, should the word "exclusive" be inserted, so that it
>    reads "SchematicsEditorsGroup has the *exclusive* right"?

Having an exclusive right is IMHO non-free and incompatible with the LGPL, ie
you cannot prevent people from getting every individual LGPL-licensed material
from the Wiki and making a book using them.

Incidentally, a way O'Reilly has to discourage other publishers from publishing
his free books is to set "Visit O'Reilly on the Web at www.oreilly.com." as the
FDL back-cover text (eg http://www.docbook.org/tdg/en/html/dbcpyright.html).

-- 
Sylvain





-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by Shop4tech.com-Lowest price on Blank Media
100pk Sonic DVD-R 4x for only $29 -100pk Sonic DVD+R for only $33
Save 50% off Retail on Ink & Toner - Free Shipping and Free Gift.
http://www.shop4tech.com/z/Inkjet_Cartridges/9_108_r285