[TAG] License Question

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ben Okopnik (ben at linuxgazette.net):

> In practice, most authors never ask about the license - it's not an
> issue. Frankly, having to figure out the merits of one license vs.
> another would make me (at least a little) less willing to accept an
> article, and would push a marginal article over the wall; I have a
> limited amount of time, and spending, say, an hour on the process is not
> an attractive option.

For whatever it's worth, speaking just as another staffer -- as well as
someone who _is_ (I think) qualified to judge licences but is aware of
what a time-sink that can be -- you're making an eminently reasonable
call.  

I suspect that, if an author wanted to use an article-specific licence
that's obviously compatible with our goals but different -- say, new-BSD
or MIT/X, or maybe even Creative Commons BA-SA 3.0 -- we'd be fine with
that, but not with one that obviously withholds major rights our readers
normally expect _LG_ to convey for each and every issue.  

Commercial use is the obvious item that would most often become the
subject of a "Oh, and surely you wouldn't mind if...."  We _don't_ mind,
but then we also don't publish under those conditions.  ;->  _LG_
conveys a _full_ set of rights for articles it publishes, including
those of commercial use, as long as credit is appropriately preserved,
as per OPL's provisions for same.

People who aren't comfortable with the notion of their work getting
reused by others in a commercial setting, e.g., on _LG_ mirrors that 
include advertising, will find _LG_ an unsuitable place to publish.  
They also, by the way, probably won't like open source, for exactly the
same reason.