[libreoffice-documentation] Fwd: Licensing for NEW documents

[Jean Weber <jeanweber@gmail.com>]

I should clarify a few points in my proposal.

By "new documents" I do not mean new editions of existing docs (eg the updates from 3.3 to 3.4). I mean docs that are "written from scratch".

Having a dual license given in the user guide template does not *require* new docs (that are not part of a user guide) to have both licenses applied. For example, the author of a NEW document (not part of a user guide) about LibreOffice could choose to delete the Apache license. 

In fact, AFAIK there is no requirement for such docs to be based on the user guide template  The template's main value is in providing a consistent look-and-feel (styles, colours, layout) and its use is therefore encouraged for all LO docs long enough to need pages for title, copyright, ToC. The template also provides a convenient boilerplate of text for the copyright page. But that page can be modified to fit the requirements of docs that are not part of the user guide set.

Of course that brings up the question of what is a user guide versus some other document. Are stand-alone docs also "user guides"? In one sense, yes, anything written to support or guide users could be considered a user guide; but I don't use that term to describe standalone docs written by individuals and contributed to the project. I say this just to make it clear what *I* am talking about, not to try to impose my terminology choice on the rest of you. :-)

--Jean

> The existing user guides are licensed the same as the OOo guides they were derived from, and the templates include this licensing information on the Copyright page (GPL and CC-BY dual license).
> 
> NEW documents, however, could be licensed differently. I propose that new docs be dual licensed CC-BY-SA (preferred by LibreOffice) and Apache (so our work can be reused by Apache OpenOffice and other products).
> 
> If this group agrees, or if there are no objections, I will change the template. Any new docs created from the template would then show the new license info.
> 
> Note 1: Changing copyright (license) info in the template will not change it in existing docs, even when they are updated to a new template. Styles and footers change, but existing text in the body of the docs does not. 
> 
> Note 2: We can't change the license on existing docs without contacting the original contributors and getting their agreement. However, that doesn't prevent us from licensing new docs differently. 
> 
> --Jean

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