jasonmcintyre@f2s.com wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 11:43:14AM +0200, Han Boetes wrote:
>> I just wrote some documentation and I wanted to add a licensenote
>> and looked at the most logical place,
>> /usr/src/share/misc/license.template, and I didn't find a
>> template.
>>
>> So I made one. Modeled after the other template and a discussion
>> on misc@ long ago by Marc Espie if I'm not mistaken.
>>
>> I would like to suggest adding this text to the file
>> /usr/src/share/misc/doclicense.template
>>
>
> isn't `documentation' covered by the term `software' in this sense?
> jmc

When Joel@ and I switched the PF User's Guide to BSD license, I didn't
feel really comfortable using the word "software" for HTML code and the
text it generated, and made exactly that change. This wasn't a man page
closely tied to source code, it wasn't something in the src/ tree, so I
felt the one word change was appropriate.

HOWEVER, I can assure you, changing the word "software" to
"documentation" was by far the easiest part to figure out. I don't
think this is needed. At most, perhaps adding a line to the existing
license.template saying something like "'software' could be replaced
with 'documentation' if more appropriate" might be reasonable, but
duplicating that much text for a one word change doesn't seem right to me.

Further, I don't think we want a blanket "new documentation should be
this way" statement. Stuff in the src/ tree, sure. HOWEVER, the PF FAQ
is the only part of the OpenBSD www/ tree which is licenced at all
beyond simple copyright. I'm more-or-less demanding that new outside
contributions to the FAQ go in under BSD license, however the FAQ itself
is a long way from being "BSDed", as tracking down some of the people
who contributed what to it would be difficult, and probably not worth
the trouble to me or anyone else actively working on OpenBSD (we got
better things to do). I don't think you will EVER see large parts of
the website "BSDed", out of simple "we do NOT want to do that", it is
distributed under copyright law because that's the way we want to do it.


Nick.