[postgis-users] PostGIS documentation license

[Mathieu Basille]

Dear Regina,

Did you consider the GNU Free Documentation License or the FreeBSD 
Documentation License? They might be more appropriate for a 
documentation compared to a CC licence (aimed for more general purposes).

In particular, they both allow for derivative and/or commercial use. The 
GNU FDL would be more restrictive (with a 'share-alike' clause), and 
allows for 'invariant sections' which are sometimes useful in a software 
documentation if you want to be sure that specific parts remain 
unchanged. The FreeBSD DL is far more permissive and basically 
corresponds to an 'attribution' clause only.

You can find more details on the web, e.g. on Wikipedia [1, 2].
All the best,
Mathieu


[1] 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License#Compatibility_with_Creative_Commons_licensing_terms

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_Documentation_License



Le 26/07/2011 15:03, Paragon Corporation a écrit :
> As several have pointed out the PostGIS documentation does not have a
> clearly defined license assigned to it. This is one of the items on our
> todo to finish off our OSGeo incubation process.
>
> Having it full under GPL like the rest of PostGIS is very unappealing to me.
>
> I would prefer it be under a fairly unrestricted license such as:
>
> Creative Common Attribution ShareAlike – something like this:
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/
>
> And if people happen to make money off of adaptations, printed copies of
> it etc, more power to them.
>
> Do others have any issues, concerns, comments, preferences about this?
>
> I guess people who actually worked on the documentation should be the
> primary ones to decide.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Regina
>
> http://www.postgis.us <http://www.postgis.us/>
>
>
>
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-- 

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Mathieu Basille, Post-Doc

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Laboratoire d'Écologie Comportementale et de Conservation de la Faune
+ Centre d'Étude de la Forêt
Département de Biologie
Université Laval, Québec

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http://ase-research.org/basille

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``If you can't win by reason, go for volume.''
Calvin, by Bill Watterson.