4:19 a.m.
2007/3/7, Phil Sung <psung(a)mit.edu> wrote:
Hi Jason,
Thanks for writing. This sounds very cool!
Under what license would the XEmacs documentation ultimately be
offered? (GPL, I assume?) I'd be happy to dual-license the slides with
the GFDL and the GPL. Please let me know if that's acceptable for
XEmacs purposes, or if there's another license or whatnot.
See
http://news.gmane.org/find-root.php?message_id=%3cc241693f0702201736r24a9...
for my conversation with Stephen about it. (I think it's the first 4
messages in thread.) I personally think it'd be less confusing for
people, and more adaptable, if you just released it into the public
domain.:-)
Also let me know if there's anything I do to help adapt this
material
for documentation purposes. I confess, I haven't used XEmacs recently.
Dunno. Xemacs-beta subscribers: if it's not an off-topic question:
what do you think?
(Unfortunately, there was no video or audio of my lecture. Sorry!)
Awww... Who knows, maybe next year you could though? :-)
Cheers,
--Jason
Jabber: jasonspiro at gmail.com
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6:12 a.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
Jason Spiro writes:
2007/3/7, Phil Sung <psung(a)mit.edu> wrote:
> Hi Jason,
>
> Thanks for writing. This sounds very cool!
>
> Under what license would the XEmacs documentation ultimately be
> offered? (GPL, I assume?) I'd be happy to dual-license the slides with
> the GFDL and the GPL. Please let me know if that's acceptable for
> XEmacs purposes, or if there's another license or whatnot.
The XEmacs Info documentation is licensed under the (nameless and
versionless) Emacs 19 documentation license. Much XEmacs
documentation is in the form of embedded doctrings, which are under
the GPL. The three licenses (ie, including the GFDL) are mutually
incompatible, and are only freely usable by a monopoly owner like the
FSF, unless multiply-licensed.
We can distribute GFDL documentation as-is, it's just effectively a
semi-free license from the point of view of XEmacs: it cannot be
combined with *any* of our core documentation.
I would guess that the GPL is more important than the doc license.
The reason is that I can forsee a tutorial helper that would allow the
user to run the examples in the tour in an XEmacs window next to the
guided tour. This might be covered by "fair use", but I'd rather have
the explicit permission.
Thanks for your interest!
Steve
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3:25 a.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
Hi Steve,
2007/3/9, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org> wrote:
[...] I can foresee a tutorial helper that would allow the
user to run the examples in the tour in an XEmacs window next to the
guided tour.
[snip]
Could you tell us more about how you foresee the tutorial helper working?
Wouldn't it be even more useful if the guided tour displayed itself as
plain text inside XEmacs itself (maybe with text facsimiles of
screenshots, ASCII art, and/or inline embedded graphics if someone
spends the time to add them)?
Cheers,
Jason
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4:33 a.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
Jason Spiro writes:
Could you tell us more about how you foresee the tutorial helper
working?
Not much, I'm purely thinking in terms of under what situations
content might want to migrate across legal boundaries. Basically I
had in mind something like code to launch the various applications
displayed (eg, adding a tour-specific drop down menu) if the user
wanted to actually try them.
Wouldn't it be even more useful if the guided tour displayed
itself as
plain text inside XEmacs itself (maybe with text facsimiles of
screenshots, ASCII art, and/or inline embedded graphics if someone
spends the time to add them)?
Offhand, I don't really see why. The advantage to being "inside" of
XEmacs would be practice in editing, as in the existing tutorial.
Otherwise, I don't see why it matters whether the text is displayed in
XEmacs or in a separate application launched from XEmacs.
What do you have in mind?
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8:10 a.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
Offhand, I don't really see why. The advantage to being
"inside" of
XEmacs would be practice in editing, as in the existing tutorial.
Otherwise, I don't see why it matters whether the text is displayed in
XEmacs or in a separate application launched from XEmacs.
What do you have in mind?
It would let the tutorial work even for students SSHed into a
school-wide Linux server, or home users telnetting into a free
shell-account provider. I guess we could work around this, though: we
could check if the tutorial PDF launched successfully, and if not,
call (error "Could not load guided tour; please instead visit
http://emacs.wordpress.com/2007/02/21/an-illustrated-emacs-tutorial/").
Also, a minor thing: it would make it easier for people to practice
editing, since they wouldn't have to Alt+Tab back and forth.
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6:27 p.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
On 3/7/07, Jason Spiro <jasonspiro4(a)gmail.com> wrote:
See
http://news.gmane.org/find-root.php?message_id=%3cc241693f0702201736r24a9...
for my conversation with Stephen about it. (I think it's the first 4
messages in thread.) I personally think it'd be less confusing for
people, and more adaptable, if you just released it into the public
domain. :-)
Hi Jason (and XEmacs),
Alas, I recently (about a week ago) assigned my copyright for the
slides to the FSF for contribution to GNU Emacs. I am not sure whether
they could be persuaded to release this work into the public domain (I
assume that it is their decision to make now).
Sorry! I realize this is suboptimal for XEmacs. But let me know if
there is anything I can do to help out.
Regards,
Phil
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5:45 p.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
"Phil Sung" <psung(a)mit.edu> writes:
On 3/7/07, Jason Spiro <jasonspiro4(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> See
http://news.gmane.org/find-root.php?message_id=%3cc241693f0702201736r24a9...
> for my conversation with Stephen about it. (I think it's the first 4
> messages in thread.) I personally think it'd be less confusing for
> people, and more adaptable, if you just released it into the public
> domain. :-)
Hi Jason (and XEmacs),
Alas, I recently (about a week ago) assigned my copyright for the
slides to the FSF for contribution to GNU Emacs. I am not sure whether
they could be persuaded to release this work into the public domain (I
assume that it is their decision to make now).
If you have done a standard copyright assignment procedure to the FSF,
you will have received a grant backward to use or license the work
under arbitrary conditions. I am not a lawyer (ask the copyright
clerk of the FSF for that), but you should be able to write something
like
Copyright (c) 2007 Free Software Foundation
Licensed by Phil Sung with authorization to the XEmacs development
team under the following terms:
Please check this with the copyright clerk (and of course, your part
of the assignment contract), but that should not really be a problem
if you got a standard contract.
--
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3:18 a.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
Hi Phil,
2007/3/10, Phil Sung <psung(a)mit.edu> wrote:
Alas, I recently (about a week ago) assigned my copyright for the
slides to the FSF for contribution to GNU Emacs. I am not sure whether
they could be persuaded to release this work into the public domain (I
assume that it is their decision to make now).
Sorry! I realize this is suboptimal for XEmacs. But let me know if
there is anything I can do to help out.
Maybe they would be willing to dual-license it under the GPL? To try
to persuade them, you could tell them:
* It would be a nice courtesy to you, since you're the original author.
* The GPL is a copyleft license, so the tutorial would remain Free.
* The tutorial could be made more useful to more people because the
XEmacs folks would be able to integrate the tutorial more closely with
the XEmacs GUI.
Cheers,
Jason
P.S. Don't feel bad about doing the copyright assignment. IMO it's
much better to write the tutorial and get it released GFDL'ed, as you
did, than not to provide any tutorial at all. :-) And anyway, it was
my mistake, not yours, to not contact the xemacs people sooner.
--
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5:20 a.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
Phil Sung writes:
Alas, I recently (about a week ago) assigned my copyright for the
slides to the FSF for contribution to GNU Emacs. I am not sure whether
they could be persuaded to release this work into the public domain (I
assume that it is their decision to make now).
It would violate their principles to release it into the public domain
(and there are various reasons why that is potentially disadvantageous
to you as author, anyway, although mostly those apply to programs rather
than documentation).
However, under the standard license assignment you have the right to
"make any use of the assigned work you wish" or something like that.
FSF supporters (ie, not the legal staff) typically say that means that
the FSF will give a license to anybody you specify under any terms the
author specifes (as long as those terms are non-exclusive). There's
definitely a possibility.
If you ask the copyright clerk of the FSF he/she will be able to tell
you whether a license to XEmacs would be granted for redistribution
under the GPL and/or the Emacs 19 documentation license. If you would
do that, we would appreciate it (the GPL is the more important of
those two). In some versions of the assignment, this sublicense is
from you, in others, it's from the FSF, so you'd have to ask to find
out how to do it anyway.
In any case, GFDL-only terms are, as you say, suboptimal, but
nevertheless extremely generous. I have no intention of looking this
gift horse in the mouth. :-) Thank you very much!
Steve
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4:50 a.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
On 3/11/07, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org> wrote:
If you ask the copyright clerk of the FSF he/she will be able to
tell
you whether a license to XEmacs would be granted for redistribution
under the GPL and/or the Emacs 19 documentation license. If you would
do that, we would appreciate it (the GPL is the more important of
those two). In some versions of the assignment, this sublicense is
from you, in others, it's from the FSF, so you'd have to ask to find
out how to do it anyway.
I have gotten a go-ahead to do the re-licensing. :) Could someone
point me to the text of the Emacs-19 documentation license? (I
couldn't find it in either XEmacs or GNU Emacs tarballs.)
Regards,
Phil
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8:28 p.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
Phil Sung writes:
I have gotten a go-ahead to do the re-licensing. :) Could someone
point me to the text of the Emacs-19 documentation license? (I
couldn't find it in either XEmacs or GNU Emacs tarballs.)
Great!
The license in question is in the preamble of the Texinfo
documentation. In the XEmacs distribution, that is in
man/xemacs/xemacs.texi. I include a copy below.
It's a very simple license, compared to the GPL, but it is not a
"template license". It is only usable with the old GNU Emacs manual
and derivatives (such as the XEmacs manual), and refers by name to
content that is not present in your tutorial. This is messy, and
it's not clear to me what it might imply legally.
I suggest two options for your consideration:
1. Grant us a single very permissive license, such as the "new BSD"
or MIT/X license. These can be "promoted" to any of the licenses we
use.
2. Use the "standard" permission notice referring to your preferred
license(s), and granting special permission to create certain
derivatives. Something like "This Work may be distributed under the
GNU FDL, version N or any later version published by the FSF, or the
GNU GPL, version M or any later version published by the FSF, at your
option. As a special exception, permission is granted to combine this
work verbatim or in modified form with any work derived from GNU Emacs
or its documentation as distributed by the FSF, and redistribute the
result under any copyleft license applicable to that derived work."
Be aware that I am not a lawyer. Also, I won't be offended if you say
those options are not what you had in mind at all.
The unnamed XEmacs documentation license:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
＠ignore
Permission is granted to process this file through Tex and print the
results, provided the printed document carries copying permission
notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph
(this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual).
＠end ignore
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that the
sections entitled ``The GNU Manifesto'', ``Distribution'' and ``GNU
General Public License'' are included exactly as in the original, and
provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the
terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual
into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions,
except that the sections entitled ``The GNU Manifesto'',
``Distribution'' and ``GNU General Public License'' may be included in a
translation approved by the author instead of in the original English.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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7:25 a.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
On 3/25/07, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org> wrote:
It's a very simple license, compared to the GPL, but it is not a
"template license". It is only usable with the old GNU Emacs manual
and derivatives (such as the XEmacs manual), and refers by name to
content that is not present in your tutorial. This is messy, and
it's not clear to me what it might imply legally.
I suggest two options for your consideration:
1. Grant us a single very permissive license, such as the "new BSD"
or MIT/X license. These can be "promoted" to any of the licenses we
use.
Ok, so I've made the work available under the GPL and the MIT/X11
license. Is that sufficient?
I've added some HTML versions of the guides (with more prose) and
updated the web page to reflect the licensing:
<http://stuff.mit.edu/iap/emacs/>
Cheers,
Phil
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7:56 a.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
Hi Phil,
2007/3/27, Phil Sung <psung(a)mit.edu> wrote:
...
I've added some HTML versions of the guides (with more prose)...
Cool. Although I still prefer the slides (they're point form, so
they're easier for me to read) the HTML versions have cool extra tips
like your pointer to M-x re-builder.
I wonder:
1. Why not move the Migrating to Emacs stuff to near the end of the
Introduction to Emacs slideshow? It contains useful info, but crucial
info (e.g. how to install Emacs) or tons of info (e.g. how to
customize Emacs), which all the other things have. That is why I
would suggest merging it in there.
2. A suggestion: Maybe you should rearrange the webpage to encourage
people to click the slides instead of the HTML. With their large
graphics and easy-to-read point-form style, better to encourage people
to click there. You could use a layout like this for each line:
Introduction to Emacs Slides (concise): PDF / ODP Lecture text
(detailed): HTML
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2:57 p.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
Phil Sung writes:
Ok, so I've made the work available under the GPL and the
MIT/X11
license. Is that sufficient?
Yes, indeed! Thank you very much!
I've added some HTML versions of the guides (with more prose)
and
updated the web page to reflect the licensing:
<http://stuff.mit.edu/iap/emacs/>
OK, I'll make sure to get the updated version for the package(s). I'm
not sure exactly how we'll handle this. We could put all versions
into a single package, or we could separate them by medium. (Eg, we
have a collection of sounds that come in .au and .wav form; all the
.aus are in one package, all the .wavs in another.)
Do you see any advantages or disadvantages to the users from packaging
separately by medium (aside from the obvious "all-in-one-download" vs
"space on disk" constrast)?
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9:09 a.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
On 3/27/07, Jason Spiro <jasonspiro4(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Why not move the Migrating to Emacs stuff to near the end of the
Introduction to Emacs slideshow?
That's a good idea. Done.
Maybe you should rearrange the webpage to encourage
people to click the slides instead of the HTML.
Hmm, I hadn't imagined that people would actually want to read the
slides. ;) I've changed the layout a bit, as suggested.
On 3/28/07, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org> wrote:
Do you see any advantages or disadvantages to the users from
packaging
separately by medium (aside from the obvious "all-in-one-download" vs
"space on disk" constrast)?
I see no reason the HTML and slides need to be packaged together,
since they are mostly parallel in content. I suppose people reading
either format might want to know merely that the other format exists
(even if it is in another package).
--Phil
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7:29 p.m.
New subject: Releasing the Emacs guided tour into the public domain; also, video
2007/4/2, Phil Sung <psung(a)mit.edu> wrote:
Hmm, I hadn't imagined that people would actually want to read
the
slides. ;) I've changed the layout a bit, as suggested.
Cool.
On 3/28/07, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org> wrote:
> Do you see any advantages or disadvantages to the users from packaging
> separately by medium (aside from the obvious "all-in-one-download" vs
> "space on disk" constrast)?
I see no reason the HTML and slides need to be packaged together,
since they are mostly parallel in content. I suppose people reading
either format might want to know merely that the other format exists
(even if it is in another package).
I respectfully disagree. It'd be better if they were packaged
together. It'd encourage people to look at the slides, which, as I
mentioned, I prefer because they are more concise. Users will need 2
extra MB of disk space, but that costs almost nothing nowadays.
By the way, an idea: Perhaps it would be better if the material was
hosted on a wiki ( perhaps at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_documentation )
and your page linked to the material on the wiki? Then it would be
easier for people to contribute. What do all of you think? Phil,
would you like me to upload the material to the site I mentioned?
Cheers,
Jason
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