[Koha] RFC: relicense wiki.koha.org

[MJ Ray]

Thomas Dukleth wrote:
> I have a very brief examination of the history of the difficulty and a
> proposed remedy for the ambiguity of the ballot question.

I think that the email was not very brief.  It seems unhelpful to send
a ~2000 word essay late in the process.  This was a live issue chased
in the last couple of general meetings, so the assumption it was
waiting indefinitely seems strange, but I acknowledge this could have
been flagged up more.

Nevertheless, let's address the two questions among those 2000 words
and some other points:-

> The Koha community does not have the same problem with the Koha wiki
> because Koha is a relatively small community where it is much easier to
> obtain ascent and agreement.

There are about 80 contributors to the Koha wiki.  Small, but big
enough to be a nuisance.

> Obviously the Koha community was too small
> for people to pay enough attention to the default DokuWiki content license
> to recognise it as a problem at an earlier point.

Why is this obvious?  I asked for wikis to be GPL in the general
meeting on 2005-05-21, before the main one moved to Dokuwiki.  I feel
that the Koha community was paying attention, but wasn't careful
enough then and now we are dealing with the consequences.

[...]
> 2.  AMBIGUITY OF LICENSING QUESTION.
> 
> There is no precise question on the wiki relicensing ballot.  Do we mean
> GPL 2 invoked with the or later clause as with the Koha code itself? [...]

Yes, that is what we mean.  The ballot has been updated.  That was
mentioned in yesterday's meeting, so an attendee mentioning it here
too seems a bit strange.

> I suppose that we could rearrange the words to something like following in
> which program and software have been substituted in a way which reads well
> in English.

No.  The wiki is software and program is a word defined in the GPLv2.
It seems like an unnecessary risk to replace them with more ambiguous
words like "content".

[...]
> What legal advise has been given to the Debian community about how to at
> least try to invoke the license well for documentation under the GPL? 

I don't know off the top of my head, but the Debian project does use
the GPL for its own manuals like
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/index.en.html

http://lists.debian.org/search.html may find some discussion of the
manual licensing choice, but I didn't find the right search terms.

> Documentation licensing has certainly been an inflammatory issue in the
> Debian community.

I think it's more been an inflammatory issue between the debian
project and some other groups which want to use their manuals as a way
to force debian to carry their adverts unmodified.  As the long
history of using the GPL for documentation shows, the debian project
accepts that.

> 3.  INCOMPATIBILITY BETWEEN SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION LICENSES.
> 
> The GPL itself is a software license with terms covering software.  The
> language of the GPL is not compatible with other types works which are not
> software perhaps because the language is more carefully constructed for
> its copyleft purpose covering software than licenses written specifically
> for other types of works.  [...]

However, most of the terms are also clearly appropriate for a wiki,
which is usually software, has source code which gets compiled and so
on.

> Anyone can make comments
> on the drafts for the next versions of GFDL and the proposed GSFDL and
> help create better versions of the licenses,
> http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html .  When the GSFDL is issued,
> there will likely be an upgrade path for works under GFDL which lack
> invariant sections and cover texts.

The comment system, stet, is broken and unusuable by some.  I have
reported bugs and had some of them fixed, but at least one has
regressed enough to lock me out since.

If you do get a comment in, it seems rare that substantial comments
get a reply, much less a resolution.

I don't know why the upgrade path is likely, not when it will happen.

> [The free software community and FSF members can certainly influence FSF

The FDL and GPLv3 consultations has made me think that their influence
is minimal and ultimately FSF is accountable to no-one except the IRS,
its home state and its board.

> [...] We ought to seek legal advise about such matters.  [...]

Feel free.  On IRC, you said you don't want the relicensing ballot
postponed.  http://stats.workbuffer.org/irclog/koha/2009-10-08#i_317670
I'm not sure where this leaves us.  I've already used the co-op's
legal service this year for a Koha topic, so I'm reluctant to call on
it for a topic which seems pretty specialised and also far more
obvious to me and we won't get an answer in the 90mins before it
closes today.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)  LMS developer and webmaster at     | software
www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op