Noticed this in the diffs from 1.7.34 to 1.7.35, in the Wishlist:

@@ -103,7 +114,8 @@
also floating point precision item in previous section.

o Attribution and licensing needs attention. Note LGPL at top of
- all source files, and note copyrights where known.
+ all source files, and note copyrights where known. Also, a
+ license needs to be picked for the new documentation.


Since the new documentation is based on the old documentation, it is under
the LGPL as well. Plus, I don't think comments can be separated from
code, license-wise, so the Doxygen docs are also under LGPL.

There is some distaste for the new documentation licenses as well, in
communities such as Debian, which would be nice to avoid.

- Chris


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Chris Frey wrote:

The old documentation files themselves do not have copyright and license
notice. There is a copy of the LGPL within the old documentation, but
from the text leading up to it, it seems that this is meant to apply to
the code itself.

I'm not saying that the documentation is under no license. If that were
true, we'd have no right to use the documentation at all, as it would
fall under standard copyright. I'm just saying that it seems that there
was no particular thought put into the topic. This isn't surprising
because the various documentation licenses we have now were either
nonexistent or just barely coming into existence while MySQL++ was under
significant development under the previous regime. Since LGPL is a poor
match for documentation, I believe they would have chosen one of these
if they'd known of their existence, and cared.

As a result, I don't think it's a practical problem to assign a
different license explicitly, as long as it has the same effective terms
as we assumed it had before. Specifically, it should be possible to use
it commercially, so long as you share your changes and not revoke any
privileges you recieved when distributing it.

Sure they can. A license is a contract, and you can write a contract
with any terms you wish. Since the comments are completely separable
from the source code proper (the same executable code is generated
independent of their presence or content) I don't see a problem treating
them separately.

I'm not trying to hijack the documentation here, just put it under a
license suited to documentation.

All of them, or just some of them?

And, is this distaste in the form "we think this could be better", or
"we won't add this to the distribution unless you change the license"?
If the former, I'm not inclined to worry about it unless they come up
with that better thing. If they do have a better thing, let's use that.

As I see it, both the GNU FDL and the Creative Commons Attribution
ShareAlike licenses are compatible with the intentions of the primary
creators of MySQL++. The artifacts they left behind for us to guess
these intentions are the fact that it was LGPL licensed, and this
statement from the original docs: "The intent of [licensing under LGPL]
is allow developers to use my library to develop commercial programs and
to allow it be distributed with commercial databases."

Tell you what, I'll ask Sinisa, and see if I can track down Kevin
Atkinson and ask him as well.

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Warren Young wrote:
I've tracked Kevin down, and both he and Sinisa have been notified of my
wish in this regard. We'll see what they say.

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On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 01:43:45PM -0600, Warren Young wrote:
I don't understand it that way. Going back to 1.7.9, there was an LGPL
file at the root, which generally applies to the whole tree. The docs
were under this tree, so the LGPL applies.

Not all the headers have copyright notices either, but that doesn't
exempt them from the LGPL.


It's probably true that no particular thought went into it, but changing
it now is counterproductive, in my opinion. There is nothing to be gained
from changing the license for documentation, as far as I can see. It only
adds confusion.


I don't understand how these things are prevented by the current situation,
and I'm not sure what you mean by "commercially". Do you want to allow
people to write a book based on the mysql++ docs? I don't think the
LGPL prevents that at all, and any changes would need to be returned,
as the docs are part of the package.


Technically they can be separated out into other files and licensed
differently by the original author. But practically, it is all code,
comments and all. It is part of the "preferred form" of the source code
mentioned by the LGPL. I've never heard of souce code comments being
under a different license than the code they were a part of.


I'm just not sure what advantage there is to changing it. I see only
downsides.


I haven't been following the whole documentation license issue particularly
closely, but even so, the fuss over the GNU FDL has reached me. :-)
Debian has declared it a non-free license:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Fre...tation_License

In my view, technical documentation doesn't really need any special
treatment when it comes to licensing, since it is only explaining
the software that is free anyway, and we want to encourage people to
contribute and fix it. It is when you get into novels, editorials,
and works of art that the GPL really makes little sense, and preserving
the document's and author's integrity needs to be embodied in the license.

Technical docs should be considered as much a part of the software as the
software itself, since without it, there won't be very many users.
Especially for a package as complex as mysql++. :-)


Cool. License disputes are a drag, but can really affect how people use
software and contribute to it. I look forward to hearing their comments.

Thanks,
- Chris


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Chris Frey wrote:

Yes. As I said in my earlier message, we presume that these docs are
released under the LGPL, becuase no other possibility would allow us to
distribute this documentation at all.

I'm not wedded to that argument. The refman could remain under LGPL and
it wouldn't break my heart.

Quoting from Debian's draft position paper on the FDL: "...we cannot
accept works licensed under the GNU FDL into our distribution."

That meets with my second criterion, so the FDL is out.

Debian themselves use the Open Publication License for their web site
text. I've just skimmed it, and it seems acceptable to me.

I see no objection from Debian about the Creative Commons licenses.

Consider this from the OPL:

"Any publication in standard (paper) book form shall require the
citation of the original publisher and author. The publisher and
author's names shall appear on all outer surfaces of the book. On all
outer surfaces of the book the original publisher's name shall be as
large as the title of the work and cited as possessive with respect to
the title."

Or this, from the CC by-sa license:

"If You create a Collective Work, upon notice from any Licensor You
must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Collective Work any
reference to such Licensor or the Original Author, as requested."

Those sort of provisions are completely outside the scope of the LGPL,
because it wasn't written with documentation in mind.

Also, there are provisions in the LGPL which simply make no sense when
you try to apply it to documentation. For instance:

"You may modify your copy...of the Library...provided that...the
modified work [also]... be a software library."

Clearly a throwback to the first "L" in LGPL standing for "Library", and
the limited thinking that comes from that frame of reference. Taken
literally (as lawyers will) this means we can't actually modify the
documentation.

Or this:

"You may copy and distribute the Library...in object code or executable
form..."

I don't think you can stretch the argot far enough to make a PDF the
"executable form" of a DocBook document. Since that provision doesn't
apply, my web site is apparently violating the license, because I'm
distributing the PDF form of the manual. Obviously I'm in compliance
with the spirit of the license, but that doesn't win many points with
lawyers.

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On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 09:06:28PM -0600, Warren Young wrote:
I'll have to give these licenses a more thorough read. You raise some
good points.

Sounds like GNU FDL is just a bad apple in the bunch.

Personally, I'd prefer the comments stay under the same license as the code.
That keeps the code's license intact. Being able to say "the code is under
the LGPL" makes the mysql++ legal world a known, comforting place. :-)

I wouldn't mind if there was some way to dual-license the resulting
refman, but that's probably far-fetched, and I prefer keeping the code
as uncomplicated as possible with regard to license.

For the user manual, though, you make a persuasive argument, and I don't
mind a change for that. If I have more opinions on specific doc licenses,
I'll post them separately.

Thanks for the reponse,
- Chris


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