From: Alan W. I. <ir...@be...> - 2003-08-13 01:40:21
|
I have been following up with Maurice and Geoffrey about the documentation license issue. Here is Geoffrey's response which has also been specifically endorsed by Maurice: ********* "I am currently way too busy to get into a documentation license brouhaha. Maurice and I both wanted the documentation to be customizable and republishable by any organization which employed the code. Any documentation licensing terms which, in the considered opinion of the other PLplot developers/stakeholders, provides this capability, is okay with me." ********* Once I hear from Rafael and Joao (the other copyright holders for the documentation) I think we can put this issue to rest since in my opinion the second form of documentation license conditions satisfies G&M's request exactly which allows us to remove the first form that is inconsistent with the second form. Just to be clear, here is the the second form of documentation license conditions taken directly from the current documentation website at http://plplot.sourceforge.net/resources/docbook-manual/plplot-html-5.2.1/ ********* "Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the authors." ********* In particular the right to "copy and distribute modified versions" under the same license conditions seems to me to exactly fulfill G&M's "customizable and republishable" request. Joao and Rafael, will you give your opinion on-list as well please? If we three are in consensus here, then I believe that satisfies Geoffrey's request for a "considered opinion" by the rest of the stakeholders, and I plan to go ahead and remove the first version of the documentation license conditions. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin email: ir...@be... phone: 250-727-2902 Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org), the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net), the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net), and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ |
From: Rafael L. <lab...@ps...> - 2003-08-16 13:54:13
|
* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-08-12 17:27]: > I have been following up with Maurice and Geoffrey about the documentation > license issue. Here is Geoffrey's response which has also been specifically > endorsed by Maurice: > > ********* > "I am currently way too busy to get into a documentation license brouhaha. > Maurice and I both wanted the documentation to be customizable and > republishable by any organization which employed the code. Any documentation > licensing terms which, in the considered opinion of the other PLplot > developers/stakeholders, provides this capability, is okay with me." > ********* > > Once I hear from Rafael and Joao (the other copyright holders for the > documentation) I think we can put this issue to rest since in my opinion the > second form of documentation license conditions satisfies G&M's request > exactly which allows us to remove the first form that is inconsistent with > the second form. I share Alan's feelings here. I think that the second license conditions and the G&M's request are compatible. We might though ask the people in deb...@li... mailing list. Should I contact them? -- Rafael |
From: Alan W. I. <ir...@be...> - 2003-08-16 16:08:29
|
On Sat, 16 Aug 2003, Rafael Laboissiere wrote: > I share Alan's feelings here. I think that the second license conditions > and the G&M's request are compatible. We might though ask the people in > deb...@li... mailing list. Should I contact them? I just discovered how you came up with that wording of the second form of license. (I have copied the original e-mail to you for reference.) Essentially you took Havoc Pennington's advice at the time (1999) which was to adopt the FSF documentation license. This is no longer referred to on the FSF site, but I assume it was an early predecessor to the much more controversial and convoluted Gnu FDL which Debian dislikes (as do I). I am willing to stick with the old FSF documentation license that we currently have for our second form, but the problem is it is no longer a well-known license and might be confused (from its name, but not content) with the Gnu FDL. Another much better known possibility is the FreeBSD Documentation License (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#FreeDocumentationLicenses). Of course it would have to be modified everywhere so that references to the freeBSD documentation project are changed to the PLplot documentation project. I believe this license is consistent with the spirit of the old FSF documentation license, and G&M's request. Also it has a "No Warranty" clause which I think is a good idea to protect us from lawsuits. If you and Joao agree this might be a better option, then that gives you a chance to search the debian-legal list for commentary about it (which I assume would be positive because it is so straightforward and FSF classifies this license as free as well.) Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin email: ir...@be... phone: 250-727-2902 Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org), the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net), the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net), and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ |
From: Rafael L. <lab...@ps...> - 2003-08-16 16:31:19
|
* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-08-16 08:37]: > I am willing to stick with the old FSF documentation license that we > currently have for our second form, but the problem is it is no longer a > well-known license and might be confused (from its name, but not content) > with the Gnu FDL. Another much better known possibility is the FreeBSD > Documentation License [...] According to several people involved in the discussion in debian-legal (e.g. http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html), it is recommend to use the same license for the documentation as the program has. This is why people are switching from GFDL to GPLv2 (see, e.g., http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200307/msg00052.html) In our case, since PLplot is released under the LGPL, I do not know if there are incompatibilities in releasing the documentation under the GPL. I will ask this in debian-legal soon. -- Rafael |
From: Alan W. I. <ir...@be...> - 2003-08-16 18:03:32
|
On Sat, 16 Aug 2003, Rafael Laboissiere wrote: > According to several people involved in the discussion in debian-legal (e.g. > http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html), it is recommend to use > the same license for the documentation as the program has. If we rigorously follow that principle, it means we should license the documentation under the LGPL (and not GPL). However, I prefer the current (second) form of old FSF documentation license or better yet the FreeBSD documentation license because they were written specifically to license documentation. Also, they both are short and simple and therefore follow the KISS ("Keep It Simple, Stupid") principle which I like. Thus, it is immediately obvious that they follow G&M's wishes for the documentation license. In contrast, it is much more difficult to intrepret the meaning of the LGPL (or GPL) in a documentation licensing context since they are not written with documentation in mind and there are many sections concerning libraries, software source, etc., that may be irrelevant or at best need a lot of interpretation with regard to what is meant in the context of a documentation license. Thus, I suggest you have a serious look at the FreeBSD DL to see whether it will fulfill our requirements. If you find some problem with it, then let's just stick with the current second form, i.e., the old FSF DL. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin email: ir...@be... phone: 250-727-2902 Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org), the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net), the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net), and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ |
From: Rafael L. <lab...@ps...> - 2003-08-16 19:30:23
|
* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-08-16 11:00]: > Thus, I suggest you have a serious look at the FreeBSD DL to see whether it > will fulfill our requirements. If you find some problem with it, then let's > just stick with the current second form, i.e., the old FSF DL. In that case, I would vote for the current second form (FSF DL) complemented by a no-warranty clause, as you suggested earlier in this thread. What about this (notice that I added a mention to "XML sources and derived formats"; please tell me if this is inappropriate/unnecessary): Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual (either the XML sources or any derived format) provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the authors. This documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. (The last paragraph was ripped from GPLv2.) -- Rafael |
From: Alan W. I. <ir...@be...> - 2003-08-16 21:06:02
|
On Sat, 16 Aug 2003, Rafael Laboissiere wrote: > * Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-08-16 11:00]: > > > Thus, I suggest you have a serious look at the FreeBSD DL to see whether it > > will fulfill our requirements. If you find some problem with it, then let's > > just stick with the current second form, i.e., the old FSF DL. > > In that case, I would vote for the current second form (FSF DL) complemented > by a no-warranty clause, as you suggested earlier in this thread. What > about this (notice that I added a mention to "XML sources and derived > formats"; please tell me if this is inappropriate/unnecessary): > > Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this > manual (either the XML sources or any derived format) provided the > copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. > > Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this > manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the > entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a > permission notice identical to this one. > > Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual > into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, > except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation > approved by the authors. > > This documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, > but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of > MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. > Those changes "(either the XML sources or any derived format)" and the addition of the no-warranty clause are excellent improvements and absolutely fine with me. So to wrap this up we need two things from Joao: (a) agree to the above changes. (b) agree that these documentation license conditions are in accord with what Geoffrey and Maurice have asked for. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin email: ir...@be... phone: 250-727-2902 Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org), the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net), the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net), and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ |
From: Rafael L. <lab...@ps...> - 2003-08-16 21:43:47
|
* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-08-16 14:04]: > So to wrap this up we need two things from Joao: > > [...] Hopefully, he will respond soon (maybe he is on vacations?) Another thing that comes to mind: we must include a copy of the license statement to every file under doc/docbook/ (including docbook.m4, Makefile.am and friends). Once we reach a consensus on the license issue, I will make the changes. -- Rafael |
From: <jc...@fe...> - 2003-08-17 22:58:42
|
On Saturday 16 August 2003 22:04, Alan W. Irwin wrote: | On Sat, 16 Aug 2003, Rafael Laboissiere wrote: | > * Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-08-16 11:00]: | > > Thus, I suggest you have a serious look at the FreeBSD DL to see | > > whether it will fulfill our requirements. If you find some | > > problem with it, then let's just stick with the current second | > > form, i.e., the old FSF DL. | > | > In that case, I would vote for the current second form (FSF DL) | > complemented by a no-warranty clause, as you suggested earlier in | > this thread. What about this (notice that I added a mention to | > "XML sources and derived formats"; please tell me if this is | > inappropriate/unnecessary): | > | > Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of | > this manual (either the XML sources or any derived format) provided | > the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on | > all copies. | > | > Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions | > of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided | > that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the | > terms of a permission notice identical to this one. | > | > Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of | > this manual into another language, under the above conditions for | > modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated | > in a translation approved by the authors. | > | > This documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be | > useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty | > of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. | | Those changes "(either the XML sources or any derived format)" and | the addition of the no-warranty clause are excellent improvements and | absolutely fine with me. | | So to wrap this up we need two things from Joao: | | (a) agree to the above changes. | | (b) agree that these documentation license conditions are in accord | with what Geoffrey and Maurice have asked for. I agree with everything you want :) Yes, I'm on vacations :) Joao :) | | Alan | __________________________ | Alan W. Irwin | email: ir...@be... | phone: 250-727-2902 | | Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and | Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). | | Programming affiliations with the PLplot scientific plotting software | package (plplot.org), the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net), | the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net), and the Linux | Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). | __________________________ | | Linux-powered Science | __________________________ | | | | ------------------------------------------------------- | This SF.Net email sponsored by: Free pre-built ASP.NET sites | including Data Reports, E-commerce, Portals, and Forums are available | now. Download today and enter to win an XBOX or Visual Studio .NET. | http://aspnet.click-url.com/go/psa00100003ave/direct;at.aspnet_072303 |_01/01 _______________________________________________ | Plplot-devel mailing list | Plp...@li... | https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel |
From: Maurice L. <mj...@ga...> - 2003-08-17 01:30:03
|
Rafael Laboissiere writes: > * Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-08-16 11:00]: > > > Thus, I suggest you have a serious look at the FreeBSD DL to see whether it > > will fulfill our requirements. If you find some problem with it, then let's > > just stick with the current second form, i.e., the old FSF DL. > > In that case, I would vote for the current second form (FSF DL) complemented > by a no-warranty clause, as you suggested earlier in this thread. What > about this (notice that I added a mention to "XML sources and derived > formats"; please tell me if this is inappropriate/unnecessary): > > Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this > manual (either the XML sources or any derived format) provided the > copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. > > Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this > manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the > entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a > permission notice identical to this one. > > Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual > into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, > except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation > approved by the authors. > > This documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, > but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of > MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. I agree a warranty clause is needed. I am worried the previous paragraphs are a bit too restrive tho. In particular, I have personally been in a situation in the past which is a little difficult to reconcile with stricter (than we have now) conditions on republication. Let's say a researcher at a govt lab puts considerable effort into making a plplot/Tk interface for a simulation / analysis tool, and wants to issue the plplot manual as an internal report subject to internal publishing guidelines, language translations, etc. It may even be a part or appendix of a much larger work. Under these conditions, the issue of distribution of the entire work becomes complicated. I also don't see how someone sending me a page full of text in Chinese and asking me if this translation is correct is going to be worth my time. I'm well aware of the dangers of having no limits on the freedom to modify and redistribute. However that mostly applies to programs; without the program the documentation is useless. I see almost 0% chance of people taking the docs and doing something with them we'd object to. OTOH I see a lot of impediment to people advertising their work properly if we have too many restrictions on the docs. If someone has built a substantial interface built on plplot/Tk, I think they should be free to republish the docs as their situation requires. -- Maurice LeBrun Lightspeed Semiconductor Corp |
From: Rafael L. <lab...@ps...> - 2003-08-17 09:12:41
|
* Maurice LeBrun <mj...@ga...> [2003-08-16 20:28]: > I agree a warranty clause is needed. I am worried the previous paragraphs > are a bit too restrive tho. In particular, I have personally been in a > situation in the past which is a little difficult to reconcile with > stricter (than we have now) conditions on republication. Let's say a > researcher at a govt lab puts considerable effort into making a plplot/Tk > interface for a simulation / analysis tool, and wants to issue the plplot > manual as an internal report subject to internal publishing guidelines, > language translations, etc. It may even be a part or appendix of a much > larger work. Under these conditions, the issue of distribution of the > entire work becomes complicated. You are right, but I think that this is more a virtue of the license than a problem, since it avoids hijacking of the manual. I do not believe that this situation would happen in the future, but since we want the manual to stay free (in the Open Source definition) we better take the precautions. > I also don't see how someone sending me a page full of text in Chinese and > asking me if this translation is correct is going to be worth my time. I know a couple of trusted Chinese Debian developers that could do this for us quickly (remember that only the translation of the permission notice requires approval). This is valid for most of the languages in the world, in which the manual could potentially be translated. Also, I think that people at FSF have already coped with the issue. > I'm well aware of the dangers of having no limits on the freedom to modify > and redistribute. However that mostly applies to programs; without the > program the documentation is useless. I see almost 0% chance of people > taking the docs and doing something with them we'd object to. If there are no restrictions, someone could copyright a modified version of the manual, making it proprietary, and then sue Linux distributors for copyright infringement. I agree that the chances that to happen is almost 0%, but who knows... > OTOH I see a lot of impediment to people advertising their work properly if > we have too many restrictions on the docs. If someone has built a > substantial interface built on plplot/Tk, I think they should be free to > republish the docs as their situation requires. What situation could that be, realistically? If we are talking about company internal reports, I think that the company can do nearly anything it wants and we will never know about it. However, our licensing terms are important if the company is going to make an external publication of the modified manual. In this case, I do not see why a company would refuse to comply with the proposed licensing terms. -- Rafael |
From: Alan W. I. <ir...@be...> - 2003-08-17 14:06:20
|
On Sun, 17 Aug 2003, Rafael Laboissiere wrote: > * Maurice LeBrun <mj...@ga...> [2003-08-16 20:28]: > > > I agree a warranty clause is needed. I am worried the previous paragraphs > > are a bit too restrive tho. In particular, I have personally been in a > > situation in the past which is a little difficult to reconcile with > > stricter (than we have now) conditions on republication. Let's say a > > researcher at a govt lab puts considerable effort into making a plplot/Tk > > interface for a simulation / analysis tool, and wants to issue the plplot > > manual as an internal report subject to internal publishing guidelines, > > language translations, etc. It may even be a part or appendix of a much > > larger work. Under these conditions, the issue of distribution of the > > entire work becomes complicated. > > You are right, but I think that this is more a virtue of the license than a > problem, since it avoids hijacking of the manual. I do not believe that > this situation would happen in the future, but since we want the manual to > stay free (in the Open Source definition) we better take the precautions. I agree with Rafael's argument here. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin email: ir...@be... phone: 250-727-2902 Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org), the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net), the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net), and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ |
From: Maurice L. <mj...@ga...> - 2003-08-18 05:13:30
|
Rafael Laboissiere writes: > * Maurice LeBrun <mj...@ga...> [2003-08-16 20:28]: > > > I agree a warranty clause is needed. I am worried the previous paragraphs > > are a bit too restrive tho. In particular, I have personally been in a > > situation in the past which is a little difficult to reconcile with > > stricter (than we have now) conditions on republication. Let's say a > > researcher at a govt lab puts considerable effort into making a plplot/Tk > > interface for a simulation / analysis tool, and wants to issue the plplot > > manual as an internal report subject to internal publishing guidelines, > > language translations, etc. It may even be a part or appendix of a much > > larger work. Under these conditions, the issue of distribution of the > > entire work becomes complicated. > > You are right, but I think that this is more a virtue of the license than a > problem, since it avoids hijacking of the manual. I do not believe that > this situation would happen in the future, but since we want the manual to > stay free (in the Open Source definition) we better take the precautions. In a /particular/ open source definition, you mean. There are many open source definitions, and many that are less restrictive than GPL and it's ilk. For software projects I personally work on, I don't particularly even like the GPL, only the LGPL is tolerable to me. My main concern is to not overly burden the code / docs with restrictions. *Especially* the docs, since there's no point to it. As for "hijacking", that's a loaded term and is not applicable. No one can seize control of the manual. At "worst" they could customize it and take it commercial. /Just/ the docs. LOL. Good luck to them. > > I also don't see how someone sending me a page full of text in Chinese and > > asking me if this translation is correct is going to be worth my time. > > I know a couple of trusted Chinese Debian developers that could do this for > us quickly (remember that only the translation of the permission notice > requires approval). This is valid for most of the languages in the world, > in which the manual could potentially be translated. Also, I think that > people at FSF have already coped with the issue. OK, so Lithuanian. Swahili. Mongolian. I don't care, I don't want to be bothered by translation issues, period. > > I'm well aware of the dangers of having no limits on the freedom to modify > > and redistribute. However that mostly applies to programs; without the > > program the documentation is useless. I see almost 0% chance of people > > taking the docs and doing something with them we'd object to. > > If there are no restrictions, someone could copyright a modified version of > the manual, making it proprietary, and then sue Linux distributors for > copyright infringement. I agree that the chances that to happen is almost > 0%, but who knows... Sounds overly paranoid to me. > > OTOH I see a lot of impediment to people advertising their work properly if > > we have too many restrictions on the docs. If someone has built a > > substantial interface built on plplot/Tk, I think they should be free to > > republish the docs as their situation requires. > > What situation could that be, realistically? If we are talking about > company internal reports, I think that the company can do nearly anything it > wants and we will never know about it. In general a company is not going to do something that could get them sued, regardless of our likelihood of "finding out". So if they want to include the plplot documentation along with their regular user docs, forget it, it's not gonna happen under a restrictive documentation license. > However, our licensing terms are > important if the company is going to make an external publication of the > modified manual. In this case, I do not see why a company would refuse to > comply with the proposed licensing terms. My target example is more like a Japanese govt agency, for which the bureaucratic rules become more complicated. Just the addition of a simple cover sheet complicates matters. It's not worth it.. I just don't see the gain from an overly restrictive documentation policy. The docs exist to serve the program, and have no purpose otherwise. It makes perfect sense for them to be distributable under a much weaker policy. -- Maurice LeBrun Lightspeed Semiconductor Corp |
From: Rafael L. <lab...@ps...> - 2003-08-18 11:52:08
|
* Maurice LeBrun <mj...@ga...> [2003-08-18 00:01]: > I just don't see the gain from an overly restrictive documentation policy. > The docs exist to serve the program, and have no purpose otherwise. It > makes perfect sense for them to be distributable under a much weaker > policy. Okay, you have presented good arguments against the licensing terms that I suggested. Although I have my personal preferences on this issue, I recognize that you and Geoffrey should have the last word, since the documentation is largely your work. According to the bug report filled against the Debian package plplot-doc (http://bugs.debian.org/202761), there are two problems: (a) incompatibility between the first (G&M) and the second (Alan, Joao and me) licensing terms and (b) the first license does not specify the conditions for redistribution of modified versions of the docs. Please, take a look at the FreeBSD Handbook License at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ln16.html This license is fine for me may be appropriate for the PLplot docs. I would like to see this problem fixed as soon as possible, since the mentioned bug report is blocking the whole set of PLplot packages to enter the main Debian distribution. -- Rafael |
From: Rafael L. <lab...@ps...> - 2003-08-19 09:37:41
|
* Rafael Laboissiere <lab...@ps...> [2003-08-18 13:52]: > Please, take a look at the FreeBSD Handbook License at > > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ln16.html > > This license is fine for me may be appropriate for the PLplot docs. To make things more concrete, below is an adaptation of the above license to our docs: ========================================================================= Redistribution and use in source (XML DocBook) and "compiled" forms (HTML, PDF, PostScript, DVI, TeXinfo and so forth) with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code (XML DocBook) must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer as the first lines of this file unmodified. 2. Redistributions in compiled form (transformed to other DTDs, converted to HTML, PDF, PostScript, and other formats) must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. Important: THIS DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED BY THE PLPLOT PROJECT "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE PLPLOT PROJECT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. ========================================================================= Essentially, these license terms require only that the no-warranty disclaimer be propagated in each verbatim or changed versions of the docs. This means legal safety for the PLplot project. No further restrictions on republication of modified versions are imposed. I think that this is loose enough to meet Maurice and Geoffrey request. Besides that, according to: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#FreeDocumentationLicenses the above license is considered as free by the FSF. Maurice and the others: what do you think? -- Rafael |