On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 12:14 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
"Stefano Spinucci" virgo977virgo@gmail.com wrote:
I think we shouldn't present *every* single alternative to proprietary programs, but only a polished and well organized list of good free software programs.
Couldn't be this part of the advocacy project ???
Actually, why not work on persuading FSF to release the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory http://directory.fsf.org/ data under a free software licence (not FDL)?
If you want to do that, please don't use a software licence - they don't cover the rights involved.
In particular, in this part of the world at least, there is a database right which applies, so the data will be covered by both copy right and database right. Something like the GPL doesn't address the latter; it's really the wrong tool for the job IMHO.
I guess it would be possible to add an extra license, along the lines of:
"This data may also be covered by database rights, the rights holders being <persons X, Y, Z> and the year of first publication being YYYY. The rights holders explicitly give permission freely for any activity controlled by these rights."
That ought to be sufficient to allow people to freely copy/extract from the database without fear of further repercussion, but I would favour a more generic license which doesn't address specific laws - that would be more "portable" across the world, I think (since in other WTO-but-not-EEA places, similar rights _are_ part of copyright, as I understand it).
Without such a license, many uses will be restricted - in particular, commercial use.
Cheers,
Alex.