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

[Przemysław Bojczuk]

Arnulf Christl wrote:

> So it does actually not solve my problem. All commercial enterprises will
> need to prepare their own training material and not be able to share what
> has already been done. So again we are reinventing the wheel. Additionally
> no commercial enterprise will be able to tap on the stuff that has been
> produced at universities and thus will also not enhance it. There is no
> point in doing that.

Ok, so I think I misunderstood you a bit. I thought you were concerned
that people who publish stuff under NC licences can't make money from
it. Of course the more free licence is the one that allows any
(including commercial) use, but most people are reluctant to use it for
obvious reasons. It's the same with software, actually. Universities
often try (and usually succeed) to sell their products commercially,
even for other universities.

Of course the author can always release their product under a more lax
licence at any time, even though it was covered by NonCommercial earlier
(it works both ways, but the licence can't actually be revoked - so if
the guide that used to be freely available suddenly goes NC, peole who
obtained it as free for any use can still use it for commercial
purposes, but of course can't do it with the version with updated
licence).

> The non-commercial
> restriction prevents us from getting things together as well as they
> could. The problem is that we make money not by selling the material (how
> much will anybody pay for course material) but for the actual teaching and
> training, providing for space and infrastructure. The price that we can
> get out of selling the course material does not pay for the work that goes
> into it.

Then releasing the materials under a free licence should be a good
choice.