[OSGeo-Edu] Free and open source your documentation efforts

[Przemysław Bojczuk]

Arnulf Christl wrote:

> Hi Gary, 
> I am wondering whether it is a good idea to restrict use of the course data to "Noncommercial. The user may not use this work for commercial purposes."
(...)
> But if you restrict course work to non-commercial use you exclude all those fine professionals on creating new and enhancing existing material because they will not have any interest in producing something they can not use to pay their bills. On the other hand we (commercials) waste a lot of energy producing training material that will only be use to a few people who can afford it. Both does not make much sense. 

I'm not sure which non-commercial licence you are talking about here,
but for example Creative Commons NonCommercial makes a lot of sense.
When you publish your work under this licence (let's say
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) it means nobody *but you* can
take it and sell it, but it *doesn't* restrain you from making money
from it. It means your work will be freely distributable among
self-study people and university people etc., but you will still be able
to print it and sell it (in any form) and make money from it.

So using CC NonCommercial license actually solves both problems
stated in your last thought: it helps people who decide to
publish their work for free to retain their copyrights and it
should encourage the commercial creators to share their work with
people who wouldn't pay for it anyway.

I hope that clarified some things for you.

Best regards,
Przemysław Bojczuk