[Nix-dev] What license does the content of the nixos wiki and the manuals have?

[Vladimír Čunát]

> However, an alternative to relicensing is to combine it with a move to a
> different Wiki, which many people have wanted in the past anyway. For instance,
> we could set up a GitHub wiki, and people could copy their own contributions to
> the new wiki. The new wiki should of course have a license from the start.

A very good idea. There were quite some discussions about the format of
the docs, and IIRC the wiki syntax wasn't very popular. GitHub wiki
should help with integrating with the other changes in nixpkgs.


Now the licensing points.

On 09/25/2015 01:00 PM, stewart mackenzie wrote:
> I suggested nix{os,pkgs} to be GPL3 or MPLv2 not the wiki.

You all seem to suggest copyleft licenses a lot, but nixpkgs isn't
copylefted, and I don't have a feeling that changing that would do good.
I actually suspect that nontrivial part of the contributions we get is
due to *allowing* people to fork nixpkgs and not to disclose (the rest
of) their changes.

Moreover, many of them would use nix expressions to build things without
distributing the expressions themselves, so it would be necessary to
create some other license in AGPL fashion to get some effect.

That was for nixpkgs code - if that isn't copylefted, I don't see the
use of docs being copylefted, especially when in the same repository.


> I wouldn't care about anonymous edits. Proving it is hard.

That's not correct.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Anonymous_works


Copyright assignments: I'm quite certain that whatever licenses we use,
the copyright should be held by a few entities at most. Currently it's
Eelco in nixpkgs; the foundation might be another choice now. We do no
formal assignments, so I'm not sure it is effectively so (I'm no lawyer,
too). Maybe we should (also) have some kind of FLA, though maybe it's
pointless when using permissive licensing
https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/fla.en.html

Perhaps we should consult someone? Domen: maybe @silverhook?


Vladimir


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