Subject: Re: Yggdrasil Pressure on the LDP
From: David Hinds <[email-masked]>
To: Linux Documentation Project writers <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 13:54:46 -0700 (PDT)

>From the tone of Matt's message, it seems that there is some history
here that some of us are not aware of.  I'm curious about what exactly
Yggdrasil finds to be problematic about any existing LDP copyright
restrictions, and why this has become an issue.

If an individual author is indifferent to Yggdrasil's wishes, they
seem perfectly free to do as they like with respect to their own
copyrights.  Yggdrasil is only exerting "pressure" to the extent that
people care about the money they are donating.  So, the "pressure" is
only in the minds of the recipients.

I'm not a big fan of the FSF and the GNU copyright scheme, and I
haven't used it on any of my own work.  It does seem to provide enough
protection for the sorts of problems that Matt raises, however.  It
does say that any modified files have to carry a "prominent notice" of
changes, along with the dates of changes.  It seems unlikely that
there would be a confusing "proliferation of multiple versions" under
this restriction, since each modified version would still carry the
original copyrights and pointers to the original.

I'd thought that most people's problems with the FSF stemmed from
having too coercive copyright restrictions -- not that it did not
provide enough protection for authors.

It seems that Yggdrasil's statement is somewhat open to interpretation
with regards to what is "no more restrictive" than the GPL.  Maybe
there is room for a compromise LDP copyright that would address the
problems Yggdrasil has with the existing copyright hodgepodge, and the
concerns of LDP authors.  Maybe Yggdrasil's real problem is that the
current system *is* just a hodgepodge.

Can someone at Yggdrasil comment on why they introduced this policy,
and what they hope to accomplish?

	-- Dave Hinds