[Celinux-dev] eLinux Wiki Policy Page Draft

[Tim Bird]

Bill Traynor wrote:
> I've posted a first draft of a Policy Document at:
> 
> http://embeddedlinux.movial.fi/index.php/EmbeddedLinuxWiki:Policies_%26_Guidelines
> 
> 
> Please feel free to provide feedback either here or on the Talk tab of
> that page.

Here's some feedback.

There a few other policies that we've discussed that IMHO should be captured:
 - site branding (only small logos at bottom, no big commercial presence or
 CELF branding.)
 - editorial policy for reverse-engineered information
 since that issue has been raised, I think we should clearly state our policy
Note that prpplague has added a note to the talk page about this, and I will
respond to that.

I have a nagging feeling there are more items, but I'll have to look at my notes.
I'll start a list on the talk page, and we can populate the policies from there.

Here is some feedback on existing material:

"Unlicensed content is any post to the wiki that does not either explicitly
 (via declaration) or implicitly (through inheritance) carry a license already."

This is OK.  I'm a little unclear how inheritance is determined. For patches
(mentioned later) I guess it is assumed to be obvious.  What about a
standalone C file?  How is it's inheritance determined?
-----------------------

"Unlicensed content will default to one of the following licenses depending
on it's nature:
    * The GNU Free Document License (GFDL) - This license applies to all unlicensed
    content that is NOT code.
    * The GNU General Public License, Version 2 (GPLv2) - This license will apply
    to all unlicensed code or code snippets."

I think that Matt Mackall had a complaint about using GFDL for text, since some
text might flow into code comments which might then be problematic to re-incorporate
into GPL software.

I thought Paul's last comment on this was a proposal to dual-license unlabeled
stuff.  This is what I prefer.  That is: "The license for material that is not explicitly
license-labeled is "GFDL or GPL v2".  We should declare as part of the policy how
to label the license of something in the wiki.
------------------------

"Prior licensed Code posted to the wiki must carry a license in compliance with the
Open Source Initiative's (OSI) definition of an open source license."

I think the "prior licensed code" part is a bit confusing.  I think this should
just read "all code posted to the wiki must be available under a license
approved by OSI."   This policy would only constrain explicitly license-labeled
code, since the implicitly licensed code is always available as GPL v2.  We might
want to give examples here: BSD, Artistic, MIT, etc.

=============================
Tim Bird
Architecture Group Chair, CE Linux Forum
Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Electronics
=============================