[dokuwiki] Re: License of the DokuWiki farming code (and Relicensing question)
- From: Andreas Gohr <andi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: dokuwiki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2010 20:32:16 +0200
>> These scripts do not have any license header, and should thus be subject
>> to the global wiki license terms, CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0. This license,
>> specially its NC clause, forbids them to be included in Debian. Unless
>> you have a specific reason to prefer this license, if you are the author
>> of these scripts, would it be possible that you relicense them under a
>> DFSG¹-free license such as CC-BY-SA 3.0² or GPL 2/3?
keep that in mind while I reply to the things below, first ;-)
> I am fine
> with re-licensing that part of which I am the author. (By the way, how does
> that work? Can I simply add a license header as CC-BY-SA and that will be
> compatible to its current license?)
Basically, yes. But not CC-BY-SA in this case.
> * The virtual host part from Drupal.org's /includes/bootstrap.inc: I guess
> that's fine, as Drupal is GPL2.
> * The $config_cascade part was originally written by Chris Smith. As that's
> based on what he wrote for DokuWiki's inc/init.php, it should be GPL2 as
> well.
Since the GPL is - like our friends at Redmond like to call it -
viral, this means this script *has* to be licensed under GPL2 as well.
> * The htaccess part is a bit more complicated:
> a) As they are only three lines of code, I'm not even sure if it's
> necessary to state an author?
Well they aren't exactly rocket science and are basically just
configuration, so I doubt it could be licensed at all.
So I guess, the answer to the initial question is: even if not
explicitly stated these scripts are (and have to be) GPL2.
Now, that we solved this, I'd like to hijack the thread for something
different, but related. As Tanguy wrote above, the Non-Commercial bit
of our license in the wiki documentation isn't 100% free (as in
speech). I have to admit, I didn't think much about it when I chose
the initial license. I chose the one that seemed right to me, back
then.
I'm not too happy with it anymore, though. Because several things
aren't possible right now which personally I'd like to be possible.
Eg.
* Allowing Debian and similar projects with very high Freedom
standards to include our docs in their project
* Let people who build commercial products on top of DokuWiki include
our docs (or part of it)
* Creating a book from the docs and make it available via Amazon or
E-Book dealers
* Our documentation can not be added to Wikipedia (yeah, I know... but
maybe some part of it...)
* Even the FrosCamp guys told me that we are not allowed to work on
our documentation during the Hackfest, because of our license
So I'd like to ask you guys how you feel about a license change to
CC-BY-SA? As Anika said above changing the license isn't an easy thing
because in theory you'd need to ask all contributors. On the other
hand Wikipedia did something similar just recently (changing from
GnuFDL to CC-BY-SA). But before we delve into how to change the
license I'd like to get your feedback on what you think about it.
Andi
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