Subject: Re: Followup: Yggdrasil Pressure on the LDP
From: [email-masked] (Matt Welsh)
To: Linux Documentation Project writers <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 09:24:43 EDT

Vince Skahan <[email-masked]> writes:
> 	- with the LDP 'license'.  My assumption from the past
> 		is that there's nothing stopping any LDP author
> 		from coming up with any terms they personally
> 		want, as long as the text is made freely available
> 		for use (not necessarily editing) by users
> 		and perhaps also folks who 'reprint for money'
> 		as products. 

That's right. As long as the docs can be distributed freely at least
via FTP I'm happy to call them "LDP docs". 

> 	- with potential merging of LDP docs into Yggdrasil
> 		products.  It seems that Adam has fear that
> 		'the rug will be pulled out from under'
> 		some documentation potentially in the future.
> 		What exactly is the concern here and why
> 		can't it be negotiated some how without us
> 		making our docs 'totally free' in the GNU sense?

I think that negotiating something for Adam directly is more difficult,
in some sesne, than just finding a license that will work for "everyone".

My only reasons for wanting modifications to go through me first is so I
can exert editorial control. Most of the other LDP docs don't contain a
lot of "editorial content" and it would be difficult to change/add/remove
information from them that could be potentially damaging to the author's
reputation or philosophical standpoint. The I&GS has more than just
technical information, though, so it's more difficult to deal with in
this respect.

> 	- it seems from reading the above that it is possible to interpret
> 		those words to say that Yggdrasil doesn't want to develop
> 		commercial products that could hypothetically be
> 		prevented from being updated at the author's whim.

It is my understanding that if a work is copyrighted by me, I can choose 
the license for that work at any time. That means I could make v3.0 of 
the I&GS, for example, "no publication by Yggdrasil" if I were to break 
ties with them. But previous versions would continue to be free (if
I change the I&GS over to a GPL-like license) and Yggdrasil could continue 
development based on them.

Of course, I can only change the license on portions of the work directly
copyrighted by me. If I were to include sections written by Yggdrasil 
in the I&GS, I would have no way to restrict them. 

Note that the GPL "virus" does not apply to my portions of the I&GS because
they are original works. If portions of the I&GS were based on GPL'd
material, I could not further restrict them, either. This is analagous
to RMS and Emacs----he could, supposedly, put all of his own code
for Emacs (not based on prior GPL code which he did not own the copyright
for) over to another license on a whim. Similarly, I allowed O'Reilly
to copyright the entirety of "Running Linux" under their own license
although portions were based on the "free" I&GS. I owned copyright to
those portions of the I&GS, so I could license them as I saw fit.

The point is that I don't fear making the docs free because we won't
be able to maintain control over their copyrights if we do so.
You own the copyright for any original material that you have written.
If at a later time you wish to change the license on that material,
you may do so, but you can't affect the license on portions of the
work which you don't own copyright for.

One thing that seems clear to me is that any derivative works based
on LDP docs are subject to go "out of date" at any time, based on
updates and modifications by the original author. This is the case now
with people printing verbatim copies of the I&GS en masse; what I 
generally try to do, out of courtesy, is inform publishers of my update
schedule so they don't print 10,000 copies of something that's going
to be revised in two weeks.

But that has to work both ways---sometimes publishers just do another
printing run without consulting with me. It's bitten a few people, but
there's no way I can prevent that. If they want to stay informed, they 
have to talk to me about their own schedules.

mdw