Re: A licence for an ‘awesome list’ (was: Starting a GNU Guile awesome list)

[Zelphir Kaltstahl <zelphirkaltstahl@posteo.de>]

Hi Dmitry!

On 16.07.20 11:18, Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:
> Zelphir Kaltstahl <zelphirkaltstahl@posteo.de> wrote:
>> On 15.07.20 08:36, Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
>>> Zelphir Kaltstahl <zelphirkaltstahl@posteo.de> writes:
>>>>> First at foremost, the list _itself_ has to be licensed as a free documentation.  FWIW, most of ‘awesome lists’ are under CC0.
>>>> While the list is not CC0, I meant to put it under "GNU Free Documentation License v1.3", which I think should be appropriate (Is it not?) and free as in freedom. Good that you hint at the license, because I thought it had a license already.
>>> GFDL isn’t considered as free by the debian standards, because it can have invariant sections. CC by-sa might be a good fit, since it is compatible with GPLv3 and wikipedia at the same time.
>> I just read multiple articles about GFDL and CC0 and still don't know what the better choice is for the list.
> Sometimes itʼs better to read a text itself than multiple texts about text. ;-)  As least FSF have always tried to keep their licences in English, not legalese.
>
> Doing it, you would find out right away, than GNU FDL is a licence for “manuals, textbooks, or other functional and useful documents”; and most of it is about things like ‘Front Cover’, ‘Back Cover’, ‘Title Page’, ‘Dedications’, ‘Endorsements’, etc, and what one have to do when printing 101+ copies.
>
> What is not written in it, though, is the fact itʼs _not_ compatible with any version of GNU GPL.
>
>> In particular I do not find information about whether CC0 is copyleft or not (1)
> Quoth <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0> (emphasis mine):
> | A work released under CC0 is dedicated to the public domain to the fullest extent permitted by law. If that is not possible for any reason, CC0 also provides a *lax, permissive* license as a fallback. Both public domain works and the lax license provided by CC0 are compatible with the GNU GPL.
> |
> | If you want to release your non-software work to the public domain, we recommend you use CC0.
>
> Besides being GPL-compatible, itʼs FDL-compatible as well, while CC BY-SA is not.

I read on https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0 about the 2
licenses, but not the original text, assuming, that they are multiple
hour reads for the purpose of understanding them.

Specifically about GFDL it says:

"We also recommend the GNU FDL for dictionaries, encyclopedias, and any
other works that provide information for practical use."

That /"[…] any other works that provide information for practical use."/
seems like a perfect fit for a list of links meant to help people find
stuff.

But then in the text about CC0 it says:

/"If you want to release your non-software work to the public domain, we
recommend you use CC0."/

OK, again seems like a perfect fit. It is not software work, only a list
of links to software. So with that knowledge both GFDL and CC0 seem to
be recommended. CC0 does not have copyleft character, which is why I
currently think GFDL might be better. But then again it has been
expressed in responses, that it is not compatible with GPL and CC0 has
been brought up.

Perhaps I am misinterpreting the mentioning of CC0 as a preference here?

What is the impact or are the consequences of incompatibility with GPL,
with regard to the list of links?

I also read a lot on
https://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001.en.html#amendmenttexta.
Somehow invariant sections seem to not apply in the case of the awesome
list project, except perhaps for the pretext?

It also says there:

/"[…] GFDL allows everybody who disagrees with a personal position
expressed in an invariant section to add their own secondary section and
to describe their objections or additions. This is a reasonable method
to improve the available secondary sections, a method that does not lead
to misrepresenting the authors opinion or to censorship."/

That sounds like a good idea to me.

I guess what I would like most would be CC0 with copyleft or GFDL
without any problems from invariant sections or problems stemming from
incompatibility with GNU GPL.

On the same page it also says:

/"For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license their
works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under the same terms as
the software they refer to, or any of the traditional free software
licenses like the GPL or the BSD license."/

But I thought GPL is only meant to be used for software? Think I read
that many times in the past, that you should not use GPL for things
other than software.

Or is it simply GPL that fit the bill of what I am looking for?

Ultimately I also want to choose something the community agrees with,
since I would like it to be a resource from and for the community.

Regards,
Zelphir

-- 
repositories: https://notabug.org/ZelphirKaltstahl