[discuss] License Approval Request: Macromedia Open Source Li cense

[David Johnson]

On Friday 21 June 2002 07:21 am, Tom Harwood wrote:

> > (4) require the inclusion of the copyright notice in documentation as
> > well as the software,
>
> There is concern the term "documentation" is loose enough to cause these
> license terms to bleed onto works that Macromedia is in no way associated
> with.  Unfortunately, this list's archive doesn't seem to be searchable, so
> I have made up an example:

The CPL defines the original contribution as "he initial code and 
documentation distributed under this Agreement". Thus the documentation is 
covered by the CPL, if distributed with the software initially. It doesn't 
cover subsequent documentation however. The existing CPL may be sufficient to 
protect Macromedia's perceived interests.

If it does not, then you might consider distributing the associated 
documentation under a free documentation license like the FDL. These licenses 
typically have clauses specifying invariant sections, which are suitable for 
copyright notices for the associated software.

Of course, neither solution will "protect" against someone deciding to rewrite 
the documentation from scratch. I don't think that is such a big deal though. 
You do want the copyright notice to be preserved so that the end user can see 
it, but it is not so important that it be preserved in a particular format 
(such as third party documentation, all references to the product on the web, 
etc).

-- 
David Johnson
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