Dear authors,
Thanks for developing the PyMS toolkit. It is nice to have free software in
python for GC-MS analysis. I have just started using it and seems easy to "hack
and extend" to my needs. I hope to be able to contribute in the future to PyMS.
While browsing the source, I have come across an issue that may discourage the
inclusion of your toolkit in free software distributions, and I would like to
make sure that you are aware of it:
Currently the license of the PyMS user guide is Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.1 Australia (CC BY-NC-ND 2.1 AU) [1]. This
license is not approved for free (as in freedom) use for cultural works
according to the definition given by [2] which has been agreed by creative
commons among many others.
I would like to ask the copyright owner of the documentation (Vladimir Likic)
if it would be possible to license the documentation on terms approved for free
cultural works, which are much friendly to PyMS code license (GPL) than the
current non-free license.
If I might give a suggestion, I would consider using a "Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia" [3]. This license is the one Wikipedia
uses and is approved for free cultural works [4]. This license change would
make it easier in the future to integrate pyms source *and documentation* into
Debian, Ubuntu and in general free software linux distributions easing pyms
adoption and usage (and therefore citations).
Usually allowing a "commercial" usage is an issue for some authors, and that's
why many developers move to a "Non-Commercial" license. The "ShareAlike" terms
is much more adequate than "NonCommercial" for free software compatibility, as
it is not forbidden to charge (or donate) for free software distribution
(really, it's all about freedom). A "ShareAlike" policy forces redistribution
under a free license (just like GPL does). So, legally I could sell someone
your documentation as I can sell an Ubuntu CD but... who would pay for it
instead of just downloading it?
The non-derivative term is usually chosen to avoid manipulation of the manuals
which lead to incorrect documentation. Ironically, the problems arise when a
linux distribution such as Debian or Ubuntu tries to package the software and
is required to perform small changes to the source to adapt it to its
particular needs (tweaking paths is a typical case): The linux distributions
are not allowed to change the documentation to reflect their changes and in
most cases refuse to do package the documentation as a whole.
That's why I would encourage you to adopt a "Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike" (CC-BY-SA-3.0-AU) license for your documentation. I
hope you consider this proposal.
Thanks for your time and attention,
Sergio Oller
PhD Student @ Institute for Bioengineering of Catalunya
(Also Free software supporter!)
References:
[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.1/au/
[2] http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
[3] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/au/
[4] Approved Creative Commons license have this seal:
http://creativecommons.org/images/deed/seal.png
Original issue reported on code.google.com by
sergiol...@gmail.comon 28 Mar 2013 at 1:51