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www/licenses license-recommendations.html


From: Richard M. Stallman
Subject: www/licenses license-recommendations.html
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 01:03:52 +0000

CVSROOT:        /web/www
Module name:    www
Changes by:     Richard M. Stallman <rms>       12/07/28 01:03:52

Modified files:
        licenses       : license-recommendations.html 

Log message:
        Talk about reference cards and man pages.
        
        Say that we are not concerned with art and statements of point of view.

CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/licenses/license-recommendations.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.13&r2=1.14

Patches:
Index: license-recommendations.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/licenses/license-recommendations.html,v
retrieving revision 1.13
retrieving revision 1.14
diff -u -b -r1.13 -r1.14
--- license-recommendations.html        10 Jun 2012 08:04:12 -0000      1.13
+++ license-recommendations.html        28 Jul 2012 01:03:41 -0000      1.14
@@ -13,11 +13,21 @@
 information into a single source, to make it easier for people to
 follow and refer back to.</p>
 
-<p>The recommendations below are focused on licensing a work that you
+<p>These recommendations are for works designed to do practical jobs.
+Those include software, documentation, and some other things.  Works of
+art, and works that state a point of view, are different issues; the GNU
+Project has no general stand about how they should be released, except
+that they should all be usable without nonfree software (in
+particular, <a href="http://defectivebydesign.org/";>without DRM</a>).
+However, you might want to follow these recommendations for art works
+that go with a particular program.</p>
+
+<p>The recommendations apply to licensing a work that you
 create&mdash;whether that's a modification of an existing work, or a
-new original work.  These recommendations do not address the issue of
-combining existing material under different licenses.  If you're
-looking for help with that, please check <a href="/licenses/gpl-faq.html">our 
license FAQ</a>.</p>
+new original work.  They do not address the issue of combining
+existing material under different licenses.  If you're looking for
+help with that, please check <a href="/licenses/gpl-faq.html">our GPL
+FAQ</a>.</p>
 
 <h3 id="contributing">Contributing to an existing project</h3>
 
@@ -111,11 +121,20 @@
 
 <h3 id="documentation">Documentation</h3>
 
-<p>We recommend the <a href="/licenses/fdl.html">GNU Free Documentation 
License (FDL)</a> for
-documentation.  It's a strong copyleft license for educational works,
-initially written for software manuals, and includes terms which
-specifically address common issues that arise when those works are
-distributed or modified.</p>
+<p>We recommend the <a href="/licenses/fdl.html">GNU Free
+Documentation License (GFDL)</a> for tutorials, reference manuals and
+other large works of documentation.  It's a strong copyleft license
+for educational works, initially written for software manuals, and
+includes terms which specifically address common issues that arise
+when those works are distributed or modified.</p>
+
+<p>For short, secondary documentation works, such as a reference card,
+it is better to use a lax permissive license, since a copy of the GFDL
+could hardly fit in a reference card.  CC-BY is fine, since the issue
+of patents does not arise for documentation.</p>
+
+<p>For man pages, we recommend the GFDL if the page is long, and a lax
+permissive license if it is short.</p>
 
 <p>Some documentation includes software source code.  For instance, a manual
 for a programming language might include examples for readers to follow.
@@ -131,9 +150,8 @@
 <p>This section discusses all other works for practical use that you
 might include with software.  To give you some examples, this includes
 icons and other functional or useful graphics, fonts, and geographic
-data.  These recommendations do not concern artistic works that
-have an aesthetic (rather than functional or educational) purpose, or
-statements of opinion or judgment.</p>
+data.  You can also follow them for art, though we wouldn't criticize
+if you don't.</p>
 
 <p>If you are creating these works specifically for use with a software
 project, we generally recommend that you release your work under the
@@ -183,7 +201,7 @@
 <p>
 Updated:
 <!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 08:04:12 $
+$Date: 2012/07/28 01:03:41 $
 <!-- timestamp end -->
 </p>
 </div>



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