[Haskell-cafe] Monad.Reader Licensing (Re: [Haskell] The Monad.Reader - Call for Copy)

[Conrad Parker]

Hi,

On Tue, Oct 31, 2006 at 12:10:21PM +0000, Wouter Swierstra wrote:
> 
>   * License: The entire magazine should be published under a  
> Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. This makes it much easier  
> to publish, distribute, teach, and share the Reader. This license  
> allows anyone to use the work in any way they seem fit as long as  
> credit is given to the original author.

Given that articles written in LaTeX are likely to be written in literate
Haskell (yay!), it's quite likely that their contents will be incorporated
into software.

Others have expressed misgivings about the use of the CC Attribution
license for software. Usually the issue is that the method of attribution
is unclear: the license leaves it up to the original author of each
article to specify how they should be attributed (or not), and has some
vague terms regarding "comparable authorship credit".

A more detailed summary is at http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary which
suggests that such works would not be distributable by the Debian project.

I suggest that articles in the Monad.Reader be BSD3 licensed, which
has similar intent but clearer rules for incorporation in software.

Besides, CC-BY-2.5 is not a member of Distribution.License in Cabal ;-)

cheers,

Conrad.