For Approval: MN Open Documentation License 1.0

[Thorsten Glaser]

Michal Nazarewicz dixit:

>Wikipedia is covered by the GNU FDL because that's the only license for 
>documentation but some developers don't consider it to be open source 
>license so Wikipedia ends up being something between open and close source 
>(though much closer to open).

I disagree on the last part in parentheses.

In fact, I even interpret the FDL, pessimistically, to forbid
me to merely VIEW wikipedia because Lynx creates a temporary
copy of the pages' contents in /tmp/SOMEDIR, which is 0700 and
the files in 0600. This is using technical measures to obstruct
(on a multi-user system, which I am on) the legibility to others.

In addition, it prevents packaging software and documentation
together, e.g. GNU libreadline, without the Texinfo _sources_
in the same package as the compiled Texinfo output directly
legible with info(1).

More info: http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html

PS: You might argue that I'm too pessimistic and nobody would
    sue me over using Wikipedia, but lawyers are chronic liars
    who rotate the words in your own mouth (damn, should not
    try to translate idioms to English), that's why I want to
    be safe.

//mirabile