Please re-license the MySQL documentation
In the past I have taken a somewhat neutral stance on the non-Free nature of the MySQL documentation, but after the recent discussion about it I’ve reconsidered. I have changed my position; now I see the restrictions on the documentation as a serious problem for the community and partner ecosystem.
The arguments I’ve heard in favor of keeping the documentation non-Free do not hold up well when you shine a bright light on them, in my opinion. I will not go into them point-by-point here, nor do I invite comments to that effect on this article, but I have considered every point and every comment in recent discussion on the topic, and I don’t see a single valid reason to keep the documentation restricted. I’m firmly on the side of freedom now. It will be a huge win for everyone.
As usual, I don’t think I can say it as well as Richard M. Stallman does, so I’ll just quote:
But there is a particular reason why the freedom to modify is crucial for documentation for free software. When people exercise their right to modify the software, and add or change its features, if they are conscientious they will change the manual too—so they can provide accurate and usable documentation with the modified program. A manual which forbids programmers to be conscientious and finish the job, or more precisely requires them to write a new manual from scratch if they change the program, does not fill our community’s needs.
Free documentation is required for truly Free software. Karen Padir, please keep your implied promise during your keynote, and license the MySQL documentation under a Free Software documentation license.
Re-licensing it would be great, but if we can’t do that, how could we recreate it with out violating the copyright? Do we have to lock ourselves up in a room and just write from memory? Or is our memory already tainted by having read the manual? Can we reference blog posts & books like High Performance Mysql or would that violate their copyrights instead or in addition to the manuals?
William
8 May 09 at 4:23 pm
I agree it should be opened in principle… but for you stay you won’t go into the details is some what contradictory to your position… if you believe the documentation should be open you should also make your reasons as open as your desired documentation… that at least would make for a more complying argument IMO…
Todd
8 May 09 at 9:39 pm
“Karen Padir, please keep your implied promise during your keynote”
Just offering the context:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsckkNBAeio
Kaj Arno is introduced at 35:44
[36:11]
Karen: “Are there other kind of big ball things that you think we should be doing?”
Kaj: “Can I wish for something?”
Karen: “Yes.”
Kaj: “So I was thinking about going a bit more open source, for instance on the documentation”
Karen: “BSD? just kidding…that was a joke.”
Kaj: “DFDL or something..
Karen: “The documentation?”
Kaj: “uh huh”
Karen: “So what do you guys think about that….Should we GPL the documentation, is that something you guys would like?”
[audience applauds]
Karen: “Allright, so why don’t we go and talk about that, lets see if we can do that..”
Karent: “So thank you.”
[36:41]
…keynote proceeds with the next topic.
Roland Bouman
9 May 09 at 2:34 pm
[...] version of the official documentation. Several people have written about this before including me, Baron, Sheeri, Arjen and [...]
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