[Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

Thu Aug 21 08:36:06 UTC 2003

Sanford Forte wrote:

>If a school district, or a private printer, want to
>satisfy the general frameworks required by a 
>specific state, *all* of the material should be 
>able to clear, *without* hassles. 

How is mixing and matching incompatible licenses in the same book making 
things easier? All this does is make it a bigger hassle for the school 
districts; now instead of adhering to the terms of one license, they have to 
adhere to the terms of more than one and possibly many. 

>For maximum impact, *every* basic curriculum taken 
>on by WP should have *all* materials available as 
>non-GNU-limited...even if that means starting from 
>scratch with some modules for which there is already 
>GNU-limited content available.

What is so limiting about the GNU FDL? It was specifically written for 
textbooks and manuals. 

>I can just see a sales representative form Prentice Hall 
>(all the way up to the CEO of that company's textbook 
>division) wining and dining textbook committee people 
>from various states and bringing stuff like this up just
>before srucial votes are cast to accept or not accept 
>certain books for district consideration.

And they would not do the same for any other copyleft textbook?

>Also, I can see the 'copyright police', prompted by 
>commercial publishers, trying to intimidate privae 
>and home schools into doing certain things with
>GNU-limited material. This industry knows how to 
>use 'dirty'tricks to get its way.

Since the text is free, then how are they going to do that? We already plan to 
work with the GNU people to fix the parts of the license we don't like. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)