Re: Licences

Anton van Straaten wrote:
> My sense is that 100% free-as-in-freedom - i.e. the publisher has no legal
> protection against people making and selling knockoffs of the book - has a
> strong chance of being a problem for a deal with a commercial publisher.

I can buy a copy of Gulliver's Travels at my local bookstore, despite the fact 
that it is a work in the public domain and freely available on the web from 
Project Gutenberg.

> I think the only way to mitigate this for certain would be to find a
> publisher in advance and settle the license issues with them, if possible.

I agree.

> That sounds like a good idea - I don't recall whether we discussed it
> previously.  I've been a little concerned about the reverse problem with our
> current choice, i.e. how well the LGPL really applies to non-program texts.

Several licenses are agnostic with respect to code v. non-code, such as the 
Academic Free License, one that I'm fond of.

> So, I don't think that reserving the exclusive right to a specific
> compilation is non-free, if other compilations are not prevented.  If that's
> acceptable and agreed on, we could probably make the statement say that more
> explicitly, or perhaps do that in a separate FAQ related to the copyright.

Yes, but which compilation are you reserving the exclusive right to?  One that 
you will deem to be "the" compilation at some future point in time long after 
authors have submitted and agreed to the (incomplete) license agreement?


In the end, I would rather see a free license detract from the commercial 
success of the book, rather than the commercial sucess of the book detract 
from the free disemenation, derivation, and reproduction of the material, 
which in turn would detract from contributions and impact of the work. 
Although I'm not convinced these are mutually exclusive concerns.

David



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