Re: [Massiv-devel] Massiv document license

[David Li <ta...@ya...>]

>>    Just realize that there is no discussion on the license for Massiv
>> document. We are looking to maintain it as well as have it translated
>> into Chinese and Japanese.
>
> What do you mean by document? The content in the massiv/doc directory? 
> There
> is a file massiv/doc/COPYING that contains the current license. As I
> understand it, the license should apply to the whole CVS repository 
> (sources
> & documentation). If it was not stated explicitly, please update it.

Using LGPL for documentation is kind of strange for the following 
reasons:

1. The terms of LGPL define the "derivative works" in term of a 
software program instead of documentation. This makes it ambiguous on 
the term of the derived works such as modification and new addition to 
the documents. After all, it's hard to define whether a new chapter is 
"static linked" or "dynamic linked" to the original. ;)

2. LGPL doesn't specify how to deal with the translation of the 
document into another language. In terms of a computer programs, if 
Massiv is rewritten completely in Java, the Java programs would not 
have to follow the copyright of the C++ version under LGPL. This may 
cause ambiguity when doing translation of Massiv document into say 
Chinese.

On the other hand, GFDL has been defined in terms of documentation and 
has clearly define the derivative works for documents. I think it's a 
better license to be applied to documentation.

---

I hope all these legal discussion doesn't bother anyone on the mailing 
list. It's in my view that it's best to have a clear license terms for 
an open source program before the project itself can be grown properly. 
Need to get these tedious stuffs out of the way before getting into the 
fun technical stuffs. ;)

David