On Thu, Mar 03, 2022 at 12:03:15PM -0700, Jilayne Lovejoy wrote:

Hi all,


As has been mentioned here prior, Richard and I are having a look at the Licensing part of the Wiki with an eye towards any updates and improvements, as well as moving that to the Fedora Docs (along with David C's work on the database for the license info).

Recently Richard posted here regarding an attempt to better define the Fedora license categories in terms of what constitutes a "good" license. He referenced the use of the terminology of "good" and "bad" to indicate whether a license is approved for use in Fedora or not.

I wanted to raise that separately b/c as we go through the documentation, how to best explain things in the clearest way comes up.  It'd be helpful to hear people's views on this.

Historically - "good" has meant the license is approved for use in Fedora; "bad" has meant the license is not approved for use in Fedora; and then there are also three nuanced categories related to fonts, documentation, and content which mean that certain licenses are only approved for use in that context, but not otherwise approved.

How do people feel about the use of "good", "good-for-fonts", "bad", etc to describe these categories?  Would simply using "approved", "approved-for-fonts", "not-approved", etc. be easier to understand?

I'll throw in my opinion here, since I'm asking for that of others: I'm kind of mixed on this.  I always thought the good/bad indicator was kind of nice in it's informality. However, now that I'm looking more closely at documentation, sometimes the use of good and bad can end up reading oddly. Practically speaking, I think use of "approved" and "not-approved" might end up being easier to understand. Good/bad also also has a greater connotation of judgement versus simply "approved" - which implies more closely that it must be approved for something. So, I guess I'd lean towards simply using "approved" and "not-approved".

Given that "good" and "bad" are historical for the Fedora licensing documentation - what are your thoughts on this?

I do not have any strong feelings one way or another foor good/bad
vs. approved/not-approved.  I have always read "good" and "bad" in the context
of licenses to combine approval with the project's opinion on the license.  As
Richard indicated, that may not be something the project really wants to do.
Like, we will tolerate a particular license but we do not think it is a good
license.

Approved/not-approved reduces that language to the project decision, but reads
as heavy handed or utilitarian.  Or at least reads as less fun language.

I am ok with a language change in this context.  I would like the license
database should carry approval information distinct from our opinion or view
on a particular license.  The latter data may be more appropriate for overall
Fedora legal documentation for future reference and including long writeups
about how or why we arrived at a particular opinion (story time!).

Looking at thesaurus.com, my favorite synonyms for approved are:

    accepted
    allowed
    permitted

    licensed[1]

[1] This one added as a joke because I thought it was funny that it showed up
as a synonym for approved and we're talking about licenses.  Yeah, let's say
"licensed" to mean an approved license in Fedora.  That should not confuse
anyone.  :)

Thanks,