Hello,
It seems that the GNU FDL (Free Documentation License, see
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#FDL) is applicable to maps as
well as manuals. Has there been any discussion of GRASS inserting an
FDL notice in the maps it creates?
With SVG maps (which I've been creating for testing code), map users
have the opportunity to edit/copy map data with a text editor. Some
commercial map vendors avoid SVG because of this. Could it be an
advantage of GRASS?
Greg
On Fri, Aug 15, 2003 at 03:11:40PM -0400, Greg Sepesi wrote:
It seems that the GNU FDL (Free Documentation License, see
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#FDL) is applicable to maps as
well as manuals. Has there been any discussion of GRASS inserting an
FDL notice in the maps it creates?
there was recently some discussion on how to license Free GeoData
on the FreeGIS Mailing List (see the archives,
http://intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/2003-August/thread.html).
There was also discussion about this
at the Libre Software Meeting in Metz about 2 month ago.
In essence, there is some upcoming need for a specific license for
geo-data. Meanwhile the GPL seems appropriate, maybe with some
future option such as the license I choose for Frida
(see
http://www.intevation.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs-freegis.cgi/free-vector-geodata-osnabrueck/COPYING?rev=1.2&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup
and
http://frida.intevation.org)
I think the FDL is less suitable though it is not absolutely
inapropriate as an intermediate solution.
With SVG maps (which I've been creating for testing code), map users
have the opportunity to edit/copy map data with a text editor. Some
commercial map vendors avoid SVG because of this.
You mean *proprietary* vendors? GRASS is a commercial tool as well! 
--
Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/
Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS http://freegis.org/
On Fri, Aug 15, 2003 at 03:11:40PM -0400, Greg Sepesi wrote:
It seems that the GNU FDL (Free Documentation License, see
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#FDL) is applicable to maps as
well as manuals.
Probably, but I'll find it not a good choice for maps.
Has there been any discussion of GRASS inserting an
FDL notice in the maps it creates?
No,
you can make proprietary maps with GRASS
and this ability here to stay.
With SVG maps (which I've been creating for testing code), map users
have the opportunity to edit/copy map data with a text editor. Some
commercial map vendors avoid SVG because of this. Could it be an
advantage of GRASS?
I don't quite understand what the advantage for GRASS would be
in your question. Naturally Free Software data formats are never closed,
but GRASS and other Free Software can read and manipulate many data formats.