Licensing directions for Fedora content

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 04/06/2009 01:37 PM, Karsten Wade wrote:

> In a nutshell, here is why we have not used the CC or GNU FDL in
> Fedora Docs:
> 
> * CC has no warranty protection clause.  This is important in
>   countries such as the US; we put out technical content that could
>   blow up someone's computer if they misuse it or we edit it
>   incorrectly, we don't want to be liable for that.

This is incorrect. I suspect you were reading the "English Human
Summary" version of the CC license. For example, see this section from
the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license:

*****
5. Representations, Warranties and Disclaimer

UNLESS OTHERWISE MUTUALLY AGREED TO BY THE PARTIES IN WRITING, LICENSOR
OFFERS THE WORK AS-IS AND MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY
KIND CONCERNING THE WORK, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE,
INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTIBILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NONINFRINGEMENT, OR THE ABSENCE OF
LATENT OR OTHER DEFECTS, ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE OF ERRORS,
WHETHER OR NOT DISCOVERABLE. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE
EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO SUCH EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

6. Limitation on Liability. EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE
LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL LICENSOR BE LIABLE TO YOU ON ANY LEGAL THEORY FOR
ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES
ARISING OUT OF THIS LICENSE OR THE USE OF THE WORK, EVEN IF LICENSOR HAS
BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
*****

> Regardless of all that, if Red Hat wants to continue using the OPL,
> perhaps Fedora Docs could dual-license content.  That way we could
> blend in GNU FDL content from e.g. GNOME, and do it so it doesn't
> actually mix with our dual-licensed content for our OPL-preferring
> downstream.

Red Hat Legal, while tolerant of our OPL stance, would actually much
prefer it if we went to CC-BY-SA for our docs. I've asked them to double
check that this is acceptable to them, and if so, draft up some wording
around how we would like people to give us attribution (that is the real
weakness in CC-BY-SA).

I would not advocate going with GFDL. More trouble than it is worth.

~spot