[kde-guidelines] Licenses

[Frans Englich]

On Friday 01 October 2004 10:56, Thomas Zander wrote:
> My first thought on this reflects a discussion (for a book) I had some
> time ago; the concern here is that code-snippets should be libarally
> licensed; people should be completely free to copy code from the guide,
> and do anything with that code. This in contrast to the texts themselves.
>
> If it is not practical to change the licensing mid-page, I suggest to
> publish source-code twice. One time in the book; and one time as seperate
> files which will be downloadable (or shipped on a CD).  The copyright
> holder of that code should then allow us to distribute his code in 2
> licenses, one is the one of the paragraph it appears in, the other is the
> very-liberal use-wherever-you want license.

But the guidelines shouldn't contain large code snippets, AFAICT, because:

* The guidelines are not about technical issues. Understanding 
programming/technical aspects should be handled elsewhere. 

* People shouldn't need it. All coding surrounding usability is simple and 
involves only basic QT programming. What people need to know is references, 
what classes to use, technologies(XMLGUI for example), and in some cases 
specific functions(say, sizeHint). I don't see how a code listing of basic 
class instantiating etc. would communicate that more than a sentence. For 
example, see the first Implementation Note here:
http://usability.kde.org/hig/current/input-keyboard.php#input-keyboard-accels

For editing-guidelines I started to write, it said:
"Don't do code listings in Implementation Notes. These Guidelines are for 
usability and not implementation. But do provide /pointers/ for 
implementation. Mention technologies, classes and functions, but don't go 
into details. There are other resources for implementation and coding."

However, if it's needed, I guess an mentioning at the beginning should be 
ok(Docbook's legalnotice element). The Dive Into Python book has:

"The example programs in this book are free software; you can redistribute 
and/or modify them under the terms of the Python license as published by the 
Python Software Foundation. A copy of the license is included in Appendix H, 
Python license."


Cheers,

	Frans