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?
Jilayne
On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 2:03 PM Jilayne Lovejoy jlovejoy@redhat.com 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?
Fedora's licensing documentation is designed for not only packagers, but for developers to use to make value judgements. The usage of "good"/"bad" terminology and the emphasis on value judgements throughout our documentation on licensing is oriented around this. I would personally prefer to keep it structured that way because it makes understanding the impact and referencing it to others much simpler.
The usage of "approved"/"not-approved" explicitly removes the value judgement aspect and I think that would be a major loss for us.
On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 2:17 PM Neal Gompa ngompa13@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 2:03 PM Jilayne Lovejoy jlovejoy@redhat.com 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?
Fedora's licensing documentation is designed for not only packagers, but for developers to use to make value judgements. The usage of "good"/"bad" terminology and the emphasis on value judgements throughout our documentation on licensing is oriented around this. I would personally prefer to keep it structured that way because it makes understanding the impact and referencing it to others much simpler.
The usage of "approved"/"not-approved" explicitly removes the value judgement aspect and I think that would be a major loss for us.
I see the problem with "approved"/"not-approved" as being that it sounds relatively unpleasantly "corporate" compared to "good"/"not good" which have an attractive, vaguely humorous, vaguely countercultural quality in keeping with some aspects of Fedora's roots. But the problem with "good"/"not good" is precisely around value judgments. Most of these "good" licenses are not really that good at all -- they are tolerable but in some cases barely acceptable. They meet minimum standards -- sometimes questionably so. I'm not suggesting those standards need to be made stricter; they're actually already pretty strict. But I wouldn't want to give the message that we actually think most (if not all) of these licenses are "good" in the normal English language sense of "good".
So on balance I'd support "approved" or "acceptable" over "good".
Richard
On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 12:44 PM Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com wrote:
I see the problem with "approved"/"not-approved" as being that it sounds relatively unpleasantly "corporate" compared to "good"/"not good" which have an attractive, vaguely humorous, vaguely countercultural quality in keeping with some aspects of Fedora's roots. But the problem with "good"/"not good" is precisely around value judgments. Most of these "good" licenses are not really that good at all -- they are tolerable but in some cases barely acceptable. They meet minimum standards -- sometimes questionably so. I'm not suggesting those standards need to be made stricter; they're actually already pretty strict. But I wouldn't want to give the message that we actually think most (if not all) of these licenses are "good" in the normal English language sense of "good".
So on balance I'd support "approved" or "acceptable" over "good".
When I evaluate a project for packaging in Fedora, what I want to know is: "Is this project released under a license that permits packaging it for Fedora?" The approved/not-approved language speaks to that. That's the only value judgment I need to make, so with my packager hat on, I am okay with moving away from good/bad.
Neal's point about developers is an interesting one. Thinking about this with my developer hat on, my task is to select a license that gives me the protections I want, and gives others the right to do with it what I want them to do with it. Let's say that I have selected a candidate license, and that I want Linux distributions to redistribute my software. My question now is, "Do the Linux distributions I care about accept this license?" Approved/not-approved clearly answers that question. Good/bad sort of answers that question, but less clearly in my mind.
Sorry Neal, but I don't see how approved/not-approved loses anything over good/bad. Can you clarify what you think would be lost?
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 like the idea of moving to 'approved' vs 'not approved' in general. I think most people looking at that list will be looking in the context of packaging for Fedora and will just want to know if it's approved or not.
That said, I think Neil makes a good point about people choosing licenses. Would it make sense to have 'approved' and 'not approved' and 'reccomended' ? :) Of course then recommended would be subjective, but perhaps thats ok. This would just be a smaller subset of licenses that are not only approved, but encouraged by the project.
kevin
On 3/3/22 2:51 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
On Thu, Mar 03, 2022 at 12:03:15PM -0700, Jilayne Lovejoy wrote:
Given that "good" and "bad" are historical for the Fedora licensing documentation - what are your thoughts on this?
I like the idea of moving to 'approved' vs 'not approved' in general. I think most people looking at that list will be looking in the context of packaging for Fedora and will just want to know if it's approved or not.
That said, I think Neil makes a good point about people choosing licenses. Would it make sense to have 'approved' and 'not approved' and 'reccomended' ? :) Of course then recommended would be subjective, but perhaps thats ok. This would just be a smaller subset of licenses that are not only approved, but encouraged by the project.
That's an interesting idea - are you thinking this would be in the context of: "If you are creating or considering a license for a package that you want included in Fedora, here is a list of recommended licenses to use" ? (which I suppose implicitly says, use an approved/good one, but don't just pick any old approved/good one, please)
Jilayne
legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 5:08 PM Jilayne Lovejoy jlovejoy@redhat.com wrote:
On 3/3/22 2:51 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
On Thu, Mar 03, 2022 at 12:03:15PM -0700, Jilayne Lovejoy wrote:
Given that "good" and "bad" are historical for the Fedora licensing documentation - what are your thoughts on this?
I like the idea of moving to 'approved' vs 'not approved' in general. I think most people looking at that list will be looking in the context of packaging for Fedora and will just want to know if it's approved or not.
That said, I think Neil makes a good point about people choosing licenses. Would it make sense to have 'approved' and 'not approved' and 'reccomended' ? :) Of course then recommended would be subjective, but perhaps thats ok. This would just be a smaller subset of licenses that are not only approved, but encouraged by the project.
That's an interesting idea - are you thinking this would be in the context of: "If you are creating or considering a license for a package that you want included in Fedora, here is a list of recommended licenses to use" ? (which I suppose implicitly says, use an approved/good one, but don't just pick any old approved/good one, please)
Yes, indeed. I've used the Fedora licensing documentation many times over the years to advise and inform people of what they should pick. The good/bad split as well as the "will it blend" chart are extremely helpful for giving these people an understanding of what they should go with.
Approval/Disapproval language is too weak for that purpose. Objectively, someone can pick any license. They can even pick any OSS license, but our licensing documentation also includes information about preferences and opinions that inform how we should perceive licenses.
-- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!
On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 5:08 PM Jilayne Lovejoy jlovejoy@redhat.com wrote:
On 3/3/22 2:51 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
On Thu, Mar 03, 2022 at 12:03:15PM -0700, Jilayne Lovejoy wrote:
Given that "good" and "bad" are historical for the Fedora licensing documentation - what are your thoughts on this?
I like the idea of moving to 'approved' vs 'not approved' in general. I think most people looking at that list will be looking in the context of packaging for Fedora and will just want to know if it's approved or not.
That said, I think Neil makes a good point about people choosing licenses. Would it make sense to have 'approved' and 'not approved' and 'reccomended' ? :) Of course then recommended would be subjective, but perhaps thats ok. This would just be a smaller subset of licenses that are not only approved, but encouraged by the project.
That's an interesting idea - are you thinking this would be in the context of: "If you are creating or considering a license for a package that you want included in Fedora, here is a list of recommended licenses to use" ? (which I suppose implicitly says, use an approved/good one, but don't just pick any old approved/good one, please)
Historically I think Fedora had some informal standards around Fedora-specific projects (not Fedora packages, but projects that are in some sense part of the larger Fedora project) but I am not sure this has ever really been documented. Most Fedora projects seem to use GPLv2, the MIT license, LGPLv2.1, perhaps GPLv3 to some degree. I don't see a compelling need for Fedora to start making recommendations for *Fedora* projects since this has seemed to work pretty well as an informal thing. As for whether Fedora should make broader recommendations ... I am not sure at this point Fedora doing so will have much impact on upstream licensing choices so I don't know if it would really be worthwhile.
Internally at Red Hat, we have had a fairly lengthy list of default-approved licenses for new projects for some time now. We've thought about making this a much smaller list. I wouldn't immediately see a need for this list to be harmonized with a hypothetical Fedora recommended list since it serves rather different purposes, in contrast to our goal of harmonizing Fedora "good" and "bad" license lists more generally with internal Red Hat counterparts.
Richard
On Thu, Mar 03, 2022 at 05:18:48PM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 5:08 PM Jilayne Lovejoy jlovejoy@redhat.com wrote:
On 3/3/22 2:51 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
On Thu, Mar 03, 2022 at 12:03:15PM -0700, Jilayne Lovejoy wrote:
Given that "good" and "bad" are historical for the Fedora licensing documentation - what are your thoughts on this?
I like the idea of moving to 'approved' vs 'not approved' in general. I think most people looking at that list will be looking in the context of packaging for Fedora and will just want to know if it's approved or not.
That said, I think Neil makes a good point about people choosing licenses. Would it make sense to have 'approved' and 'not approved' and 'reccomended' ? :) Of course then recommended would be subjective, but perhaps thats ok. This would just be a smaller subset of licenses that are not only approved, but encouraged by the project.
That's an interesting idea - are you thinking this would be in the context of: "If you are creating or considering a license for a package that you want included in Fedora, here is a list of recommended licenses to use" ? (which I suppose implicitly says, use an approved/good one, but don't just pick any old approved/good one, please)
Yeah... More like "If you are starting an open source project and plan to package it for Fedora, here's a list of what we consider the "best" licenses to use.
Historically I think Fedora had some informal standards around Fedora-specific projects (not Fedora packages, but projects that are in some sense part of the larger Fedora project) but I am not sure this has ever really been documented. Most Fedora projects seem to use
There have been some standards around applications/packages written for Fedora Infrastructure: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure_Licensing but of course thats changed somewhat in recent years with the Fedora Council saying it was ok to use non free infrastructure if needed.
GPLv2, the MIT license, LGPLv2.1, perhaps GPLv3 to some degree. I don't see a compelling need for Fedora to start making recommendations for *Fedora* projects since this has seemed to work pretty well as an informal thing. As for whether Fedora should make broader recommendations ... I am not sure at this point Fedora doing so will have much impact on upstream licensing choices so I don't know if it would really be worthwhile.
Yeah, probibly not much effect.
Internally at Red Hat, we have had a fairly lengthy list of default-approved licenses for new projects for some time now. We've thought about making this a much smaller list. I wouldn't immediately see a need for this list to be harmonized with a hypothetical Fedora recommended list since it serves rather different purposes, in contrast to our goal of harmonizing Fedora "good" and "bad" license lists more generally with internal Red Hat counterparts.
Just a thought. Perhaps it's not practical / useful now (although it might have been once upon a time).
kevin
Jilayne Lovejoy wrote:
Practically speaking, I think use of "approved" and "not-approved" might end up being easier to understand.
"Not approved" can be understood as "not yet decided". You might get requests to please evaluate and approve this or that not-approved license.
I think "disapproved" would be clearer. Or "forbidden", "prohibited", "rejected" or "disallowed".
Björn Persson
Dne 03. 03. 22 v 23:48 Björn Persson napsal(a):
Jilayne Lovejoy wrote:
Practically speaking, I think use of "approved" and "not-approved" might end up being easier to understand.
"Not approved" can be understood as "not yet decided". You might get requests to please evaluate and approve this or that not-approved license.
Yep, same concern here.
Other than that, I also share Neals point, although this is the bigger concern to me.
Vít
I think "disapproved" would be clearer. Or "forbidden", "prohibited", "rejected" or "disallowed".
Björn Persson
legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
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,
This is a great discussion!
On 3/4/22 7:27 AM, David Cantrell wrote:
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
The point about not-approved being thought of in a different way was a really good one.
Given those comments and David's synonyms, could we land on:
Allowed Allowed-fonts Allowed-content Allowed-documentation Not-allowed
?
Of course, the documentation explaining in more detail the criteria for these is what really matters. In any case, I think it is a good goal to use terminology that is easy to grasp on its face, particularly for non-native English speakers, is a good goal.
It seems to me that "allowed" and "permitted" are the most logical, but then I'm a native English speaker, so my opinion is not as key here!
I think I like "allowed" because it makes sense in a sentence: "This license is (not)allowed for use in Fedora." I don't think that suffers the same potential lack of clarity as "this license is not approved for use in Fedora" being taken to mean it has not yet been reviewed/approved.
thoughts?
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. :)
oh goodness!
Jilayne
Thanks,
On Fri, Mar 04, 2022 at 03:52:36PM -0700, Jilayne Lovejoy wrote:
This is a great discussion!
On 3/4/22 7:27 AM, David Cantrell wrote:
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
The point about not-approved being thought of in a different way was a really good one.
Given those comments and David's synonyms, could we land on:
Allowed Allowed-fonts Allowed-content Allowed-documentation Not-allowed
?
Of course, the documentation explaining in more detail the criteria for these is what really matters. In any case, I think it is a good goal to use terminology that is easy to grasp on its face, particularly for non-native English speakers, is a good goal.
It seems to me that "allowed" and "permitted" are the most logical, but then I'm a native English speaker, so my opinion is not as key here!
I think I like "allowed" because it makes sense in a sentence: "This license is (not)allowed for use in Fedora." I don't think that suffers the same potential lack of clarity as "this license is not approved for use in Fedora" being taken to mean it has not yet been reviewed/approved.
thoughts?
I like these. And the example sentence. I think allowed is simpler than permitted.
Thanks,
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. :)
oh goodness!
Jilayne
Thanks,
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Björn Persson -
David Cantrell -
Jerry James -
Jilayne Lovejoy -
Kevin Fenzi -
Neal Gompa -
Richard Fontana -
Vít Ondruch