[Savannah-hackers-public] Re: [gnu.org #279942] PDL - Public Documentation License

[Sylvain Beucler via RT]

On Fri, Mar 31, 2006 at 08:30:39AM -0500, Brett Smith via RT wrote:
> > [beuc - Mon Mar 20 11:32:14 2006]:
> >
> > Could you tell me if the Public Documentation License
> > (http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/PDL.html) is a free documentation
> > license?
> 
> Hi Sylvain,
> 
> I'm sorry we didn't get a response to you quicker on this --
> unfortunately, I didn't notice the From: address in my initial skim, so
> I didn't think to prioritize it. In the future, if you put [gnu-maint]
> in the subject line of mail dealing with Savannah, that will get our
> attention and a quicker reply.
> 
> That said, some parts of the PDL are definitely murky, and I'm afraid we
> don't really have the resources available to evaluate its freeness with
> the GPLv3 process underway. Unless you're noticing a huge upsurge in
> the popularity of this license, figuring this out will probably have to
> wait a while.

I assume you know it is the license used by the OpenOffice
documentation :)

http://www.openoffice.org/license.html and
http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-licensing.html and other users
comments makes me think this is a mandatory license for inclusion in
the project.

I never saw it ouside of OOo though, and never at Savannah. Actually I
asked because I wondered about recommending such documents on my
free-software-based company's website - so this is not urgent indeed.

-- 
Sylvain