Re: linuxdoc.org: copyright and Manifesto

[Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@canada.com>]

On Sep 16, 5:32pm, Mark Komarinski wrote:
    >> Subject: Re: linuxdoc.org: copyright and Manifesto Should
    >> authors who wish to use this copyright just reference the URL,
    >> or should they include it as part of the document?

Is the LDP a body of work, or a library?  

It seems to me a valid purpose of the LDP would be to give guidance to
authors to retain consistent style among documents of certain types
(howtos, manuals, whitepapers, minis &c) although, as we get things
properly indexed and cataloged, those types should vanish with time
and all docs would just melt into some giant thing called the LDP.

To do something like this and also be comprehensive, we'd need to
accomodate any licence any author may wish to apply.  That leads to
having tiers of licences to distinguish those docs which are public
domain (anyone can change anything including authorship) from those
where some or even all rights are reserved.

For example, the OPL (opencontent.org) allows for documents to
prohibit print editions, but be freely distributed electronically;
NewRiders, SAMS and ORA books under this licence could be taken apart
and distributed as individual papers in an "electronic annex" to the
LDP, and could be included by CD-harvesters like LSL and CheapBytes,
whereas the core LDP texts could also be printed and bound by low
budget publishers.

Where does the OPL fit into the LDP agenda?

As a side note, international copyright laws from the mid-80's
state that copyrights are *assumed* to be strict unless otherwise
stated, ie, unless you explicitely give away rights, all rights
are reserved on all material; the main purpose behind the GPL
and the OPLs are to be selective in the rights they give away.

-- 
Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@canada.com>  TeleDynamics Communications Inc
Business Telecom Services : Internet Consulting : http://www.teledyn.com
Linux Writers Workshop Archive: http://www.egroups.com/group/linux-hack/
"You don't play what you know; you play what you hear." -- (Miles Davis)


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