[pkg-firebird-general] Licensing of firebird manpages

[Damyan Ivanov]

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Hi, Daniel,

I am writing you because of the licensing of the manpages you wrote for
firebird packages.

The current situation is:
debian/fbmgr.sgml
debian/fbstat.sgml
debian/gdef.sgml
debian/gfix.sgml
debian/gpre.sgml
debian/gsec.sgml
  copyright 2004 Daniel Urban <daniel.sente.pl>
  License: GPL-2-or-later

debian/isql-fb.sgml
  copyright 2002 Damyan Ivanov <dam at modsoftsys.com>
  License: GFDL-1.1 with no invariant sections, front-cover texts and no
  back-cover texts

debian/nbackup.sgml
  copyright 2007 Damyan Ivanov <dam at modsoftsys.com>
  License: (beerware) Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or
  modify this document, with or without modifications, provided that
  this notice is retained. If we meet some day, and you think this stuff
  is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return.

The problem with this is that, IMO, neither GFDL, nor GPL-2 are
compatible with upstream licenses - IPL/IDPL.

I see two approaches out of the situation.

1) license manpages under IDPL too
2) license them using some other license

IDPL would allow the man pages to be included upstream, but agreeing to
be sued in California courts is something I, personally, would like to
avoid if possible. Another alternative that would allow[0] inclusion is
LGPL, which I don't find appropriate for documentation.

I for one would take approach 2), using the beerware license (see
nbackup above) for its simplicity and humorous nature. Another
alternative could be the Expat license[1].

Please tell me would you consider changing the license of the man pages
you wrote. A licensing terms for the packaging work would be nice too.

If you decide to change the licensing, a signed mail would be nice.


Thanks,
	dam

[0]
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-firebird/branches/2.0.0/doc/license/README.license.usage.txt?op=file&rev=0&sc=0
[1] http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt

- --
Damyan Ivanov                           Modular Software Systems
dam at modsoftsys.com
phone +359(2)928-2611, 929-3993              fax +359(2)920-0994
mobile +359(88)856-6067             dam at jabber.minus273.org/Gaim
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