[freeroleplay] Re: [Fwd: Free-Content Licensing of FUDGE]
- From: Jamie Jensen <yarvin@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: freeroleplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 15:39:50 -0600
> And often, it's either easy to do or difficult to do, regardless of
> how transparent it is. MS Word or obfuscated HTML can both be converted
> to plain text relatively easily, at which point they become no harder
> to convert than plain text.
>
> TeX is probably considered transparent, but getting that into some
> other format probably isn't going to be any easier than MS Word.
> How about nroff? Docbook is very badly designed in places and leads
> to totally unreadable markup (which is why I decided not to use it
> even for technical documentation).
>
And let's not forget that Tex/LaTeX, while good at certain things, is
a pretty arcane format, which is one of the reasons why I avoid it.
Good to hear I'm not missing much by not learning DocBook, though I
certainly wish there were a good, publishing-quality XML format for
books, considering how much simpler XML is than TeX.
> > > It's only when you start looking at XHTML that things start becoming
> > > sensible, and there's very little out there that will produce proper
> > > XHTML.
> >
> > OO.org does ;)
>
> Admittedly I haven't used OO much (I'm not that much of a fan of it),
> so have never tried.=20
>
I didn't know that, either. I use OO all the time, but I usually
refuse to use word processors for HTML because of how awkward they
tend to be and how complicated the resulting markup usually is.
>
> Most people get a copy 'free' from work, or from a friend or a
> newsgroup. I'm actually all for MS enforcing licenses and making
> everyone pay them, since currently the 'OO/Linux is free' isn't
> actually much of an advantage for the home user.
I refuse to cheer for a decision of Microsoft to be nasty, no matter
how good it makes the good guys look.
I'll cheer when Microsoft starts producing Free Software.
>
> > You do not necessarily require a transparent editor to create a
> > transparent copy. The FDL does not restrict the editor, only the
> > Transparent format you publish in.
>
> But the format determines the editor. Try writing decent HTML if
> you're using Frontpage or MS Word. You can export as plain text,
> but then you loose tables and graphics. Most people aren't going
> to want to do this.
>
> My point is, if you have to start arguing with someone over whether
> their HTML document is 'transparent' or not (and many people may
> have difficulty understanding the concept - not using MS Word format
> is easy to understand, but HTML is just HTML, isn't it?) then
> something somewhere has gone wrong. If someone has just spent time
> writing some good quality add ons for my free game system, I don't
> want to quibble over license issues, when the whole idea is to not
> have to do this.
>
Very good point.
> Hmm, we're starting to talk about licenses again rather than actual
> game content aren't we? Which is partly my point I suppose.
>
Another good point, though one we can personally fix. Anyone want to
discuss some new game mechanic/setting/concept idea they've had
recently?
I'll probably post something if no one else does, but I welcome all comments.
> =46rom this last point of view, the BSD license is quite simply the
> best since it's so simple.
The BSD is certainly one of the most elegant licenses out there. The
problem, of course, is that, like the OGL, it does not require
downstream publishers to play nice.
--
J. Jensen
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