Re: [RFC v4] system_data_types.7: Document sigval, ssize_t, suseconds_t, time_t, timer_t, timespec & timeval

Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
2020-09-16T08:03:34Z

[CC += AEB]

On 9/16/20 2:59 AM, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
> Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) dixit:
>
>>> +.\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM)
>>> +.\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
>>> +.\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
>>> +.\" preserved on all copies.
>>> +.\"
>>> +.\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
>>> +.\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
>>> +.\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
>>> +.\" permission notice identical to this one.
>>> +.\"
>>> +.\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
>>> +.\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
>>> +.\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
>>> +.\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not
>>> +.\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
>>> +.\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
>>> +.\" professionally.
>>> +.\"
>>> +.\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
>>> +.\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
>>> +.\" %%%LICENSE_END
>
> I severely object.

And as someone with no history of involvement with the man-pages project
(at least as far as I am aware), and seemingly little awareness of the
history or practices of the project, we should listen to you because...?

To be clear: I ask that provocative question because the strident,
demanding tone of your mail rubs me the wrong way. Please take it
somewhere else than this list.

> This licence doesn’t even have an SPDX identifier, nor is it
> OSI certified.

True, though OSI is in the business of certifying software
licenses, not documentation licenses. That said, I'd have
no problem with someone attempting OSI certification of the
license or doing the mechanics of obtaining an SPDX identifier
for it.

> Please use a standard Open Source licence, *especially* as you
> are introducing new material here.

The "verbatim" license has been the most widely used license in
manual pages, almost since the inception of the project 27 years
ago. (Currently more than half of the pages carry this license.)

I don't know the origin of the license (perhaps AEB does),
but as far as I'm concerned, it is a satisfactory license for
its purpose. And since on the one hand it is, and has been, the
most widely used license and, on the other hand, I am interested
to avoid license proliferation, it's my preferred choice for new
pages. But, as you note, there are other choices:

> Before submitting this eMail, I found
> https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/licenses.html
> and if that is indeed the applicable document, please use BSD.

(Obviously) I have no objection to this license, but currently
about 5% of pages in the project use some flavor of BSD license,
and then mainly because they were lifted straight from a BSD.

Thanks,

Michael

--
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/