Re: Boilerplate License Revision Proposal

[Poet/Joshua Drake <poet@linuxports.com>]

>You are right, author should be able to make money from their documents.
>But not at the expense of making non free documents.
>
>Maybe we should try to find a way for our authors to get a compensation
>for the time and energy they spend writing free docs?
>
>I would support a "public service" scheme, where linux distributions,
>publisher, would give money to the LDP authors as an acknowledgement of
>their effort, but without any obligation.

This is actually not a bad idea, and is the part of the idea behind the
Open Source Documentation Fund, that was started by OpenDocs Publishing.

My main point, among all of this -- is the financial capabilities of the
authors. I don't think that anyone could argue that we would receive
better quality documentation "if" people could take the time to make it
part of their living.

I am not saying that we have bad docs now (ok some are bad) but we have a
lot of talented people that could do a lot more if they could "afford" to.

Something else to think about... The 4 major players in the Linux industry
(retail wise), RedHat, Mandrake, Corel, and Suse all have licenses on
their documentation that is either the OPL or something very similar. I
have to double check Corel and Suse but I know RedHat and Mandrake are
like this.

Joshua Drake


>
>

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<WEBMASTER>LDP		- http://www.linuxdoc.org	</WEBMASTER>
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Instead of asking why a piece of software is using "1970s technology," 
start asking why software is ignoring 30 years of accumulated wisdom. 
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