[Kdeev-books] First cut - scripting chapter, dcop chapterand structure

[Ralf Nolden]

On Sonntag, 31. August 2003 16:48, Jan Schumacher wrote:
> On Sunday 31 August 2003 15:09, Ralf Nolden wrote:
> > On Sonntag, 31. August 2003 14:53, Brad Hards wrote:
> > > Is there money involved in this? Is it intended that the book will be
> > > published? Where is the money coming from, and where is it going to?
> >
> > Yes, there will be money involved as soon as the book gets published by a
> > publisher if the KDE e.V. makes the publication with a certain publisher
> > by a contract (this is also the reason why the FDL is preferred to
> > preserve the rights of the individual authors and the KDE e.V.).
> >
> > The money will come from the publisher (O'Reilly or whoever) and will go
> > to the account of KDE e.V. to finance developer meetings and so forth. As
> > KDE e.V. is a non-profit (read: unlike a not-for-profit) organization, it
> > has to spend the money it owns on a balance for the needs of the KDE
> > project. Therefore this book (or books) will also help to finance
> > developer meetings and infrastructure for KDE Development.
>
> How so? Why would a publisher have to pay for the rights to publish the
> book? If you plan to release it under either the GFDL or the GPL, the
> publisher is granted that right by the license. The only difference the
> GFDL might make is the condition to preserve invariant sections and cover
> texts and some other restricions.
>
> > I'm more than willing to inform anyone about the reasons to have KDE e.V.
> > involved; but the goal of writing the book is that anyone can participate
> > just like on the KDE sourcecode as well.
>
> Any copyleft license would ensure that without any copyright assignments.
>
> > It is just a more convenient way
> > to have KDE e.V. publish the books as that will serve KDE as a whole
> > anyway.
>
> Why will it serve KDE more if KDE e.V. had the copyrights? If the license
> is copyleft, they can get anyone to publish the book if they so choose.
>
> > We could also have any individual have the copyright with granting the
> > KDE e.V. the right to publish the documents, modified or unmodified,
> > according to the needs of the KDE e.V. If someone has some experience
> > with such a procedure, please show up :-)  We could also ask at the GNU
> > project/FSF how to deal with that procedure; they probably have some
> > experience there.
>
> It is not necessary at all to give KDE e.V. any special rights at all, if
> the license of the book is reasonably free. In my earlier mail I already
> mentioned that I'd prefer the GPL of the GFDL, but both will assure that
> anyone is allowed to publish the book.

You may be right with that, and I prefer a fully open license over the open 
publication license as well. The issue I have with using the GPL is that when 
I wrote the KDevelop docs (~500 pages) the book got printed and I had to buy 
a version for my own records. The FDL at least makes sure that you get a copy 
for yourself plus that the covers have to mention the author.

For publishing companies it also matters which license the book(s) have. 
Although they prefer non-free licenses, O'Reilly for instance publishes FDL 
books as well. In most cases they want to have the single publishing rights 
granted, which is something that they will pay for, which in turn means that 
when you deal with publishers you can trade to get something in return, even 
if it's low priced or that your requirement is that the books itself should 
be fairly cheap to buy for anyone (which is a desireable goal for us, too).

Thus I would prefer the FDL over the GPL, if you're ok with that.

Ralf
>
> Regards
> Jan
>
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-- 
We're not a company, we just produce better code at less costs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralf Nolden
nolden at kde.org

The K Desktop Environment       The KDevelop Project
http://www.kde.org              http://www.kdevelop.org
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