Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Jump to bottom

qubes-doc appears to be unlicensed #4219

Open
strugee opened this issue Aug 16, 2018 · 13 comments
Open

qubes-doc appears to be unlicensed #4219

strugee opened this issue Aug 16, 2018 · 13 comments
Labels
C: doc legal This issue involves matters of law. P: default Priority: default. Default priority for new issues, to be replaced given sufficient information. T: task Type: task. An action item that is neither a bug nor an enhancement.

Comments

@strugee
Copy link
Contributor

strugee commented Aug 16, 2018

Maybe I'm missing something super obvious, but the Qubes documentation appears to be unlicensed. https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-doc doesn't mention it in the README or a LICENSE/COPYING file, and I don't see anything in https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/ either. The closest I can find is https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/license/, but that's not really right since that's about the code itself.

Thanks for maintaining Qubes <3
@andrewdavidwong andrewdavidwong added T: task Type: task. An action item that is neither a bug nor an enhancement. business This issue pertains to some business aspect of the Qubes OS Project. labels Aug 16, 2018
@andrewdavidwong andrewdavidwong added this to the Ongoing milestone Aug 16, 2018
@andrewdavidwong
Copy link
Member

CC: @rootkovska, @marmarek

@mfc
Copy link
Member

mfc commented May 13, 2019

shall we assume GPLv2 and add to qubes-doc repo? and if so broaden language on https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/license to explicitly include documentation?

@strugee
Copy link
Contributor Author

strugee commented May 13, 2019

I would personally feel comfortable licensing my work under GPLv2, but it doesn't seem like the best solution to me. GPL is meant for software; why not pick a license that's more suited for documentation like Creative Commons? You could also use the GNU Free Documentation License although honestly I don't know much about that one.

@andrewdavidwong andrewdavidwong added C: doc P: default Priority: default. Default priority for new issues, to be replaced given sufficient information. labels May 14, 2019
@andrewdavidwong
Copy link
Member

How about CC BY-SA?

From https://creativecommons.org/licenses/:

Attribution-ShareAlike
CC BY-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

The Fedora docs also use this license (version 3.0).

What do you think @marmarek ?

@marmarek
Copy link
Member

Yes, GPL is not good for documentation, but CC BY-SA seems like a good fit.

@andrewdavidwong andrewdavidwong self-assigned this May 16, 2019
@andrewdavidwong andrewdavidwong mentioned this issue May 16, 2019
Closed
andrewdavidwong pushed a commit to QubesOS/qubes-doc that referenced this issue May 17, 2019
Add licensing info about documentation and artwork
e2130e6 
QubesOS/qubes-issues#4219
QubesOS/qubes-issues#5042
@strugee
Copy link
Contributor Author

strugee commented May 17, 2019

Don't we need to ask all copyright holders if they're okay with that license? Sorry for raining on the parade :/

@andrewdavidwong
Copy link
Member

Don't we need to ask all copyright holders if they're okay with that license? Sorry for raining on the parade :/

Do we? I have no idea. Who are all the copyright holders? Is it just everyone who has contributed to qubes-doc (hundreds of people)? How are we supposed to ask them all? What do we about the ones we can't reach or who don't respond?

If this is a legal requirement and we can't meet it (seems like we wouldn't be able to), then what are our alternatives? Can we just refuse to specify a license for the documentation?

andrewdavidwong pushed a commit to QubesOS/qubes-doc that referenced this issue May 17, 2019
Revert "Add CC BY-SA 4.0 license for qubes-doc"
1259297 
This reverts commit 46e1830.

@strugee has raised the question of whether we must ask all copyright
holders to agree to this license. See QubesOS/qubes-issues#4219.
andrewdavidwong pushed a commit to QubesOS/qubes-doc that referenced this issue May 17, 2019
Revert "Add licensing info about documentation and artwork"
6379696 
This reverts commit e2130e6.

@strugee has raised the question of whether we must ask all copyright
holders to agree to this license. See QubesOS/qubes-issues#4219.
@andrewdavidwong
Copy link
Member

Reverted commits.

@andrewdavidwong andrewdavidwong removed their assignment May 17, 2019
@andrewdavidwong
Copy link
Member

Sounds like we need legal advice on this issue.

@marmarek
Copy link
Member

cc @MiCh

@andrewdavidwong andrewdavidwong mentioned this issue Jul 15, 2019
Closed
@marmarek marmarek mentioned this issue Jul 15, 2019
Open
2 tasks
@iamahuman iamahuman mentioned this issue Dec 30, 2020
Open
@mfc
Copy link
Member

mfc commented Apr 6, 2021

FYI we're seeking expert feedback on this and will report back.

@andrewdavidwong andrewdavidwong added legal This issue involves matters of law. and removed business This issue pertains to some business aspect of the Qubes OS Project. labels May 21, 2022
@andrewdavidwong
Copy link
Member

FYI we're seeking expert feedback on this and will report back.

Did anything ever come of this?

@mfc
Copy link
Member

mfc commented May 21, 2022

FYI we're seeking expert feedback on this and will report back.

Did anything ever come of this?

i re-upped email with current state

@andrewdavidwong andrewdavidwong removed this from the Non-release milestone Aug 13, 2023
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Assignees
No one assigned
Labels
C: doc legal This issue involves matters of law. P: default Priority: default. Default priority for new issues, to be replaced given sufficient information. T: task Type: task. An action item that is neither a bug nor an enhancement.
Projects
None yet
Milestone
No milestone
Development

No branches or pull requests
4 participants
@marmarek @strugee @mfc @andrewdavidwong