Etherpunk

Theo made a statement (link goes to thread) about licensing which made me think: "Hmm, we need a book on licensing about the spirit of the licenses, interpretations of the licenses, and best uses for what fits your desires".

This book might include licensing for documentation (such as my wiki), software, and blogs as those seem to be the big three that common people write stuff for. I would also like to see a chapter dedicated to the legal side and spend a bit of time educating the person about how to defend yourself, who to go to who may help (doesn't FSF help?), explain a few legal terms, etc. It seems that at the moment many people in the OSS world don't entirely understand the spirit of the licensing -- which is why I think the GPL vs BSD debate is such a heated debate.

My first document was the first version of this, which was later (the current version) re-hacked by someone else and added some more stuff (assistance from nazadus? I wrote at least 1/4 of that). Another one I wrote actually had a license at the bottom. When SGL split in to SourceMage GNU/Linux, Lunar Linux, and Sorcerer Linux (non-GPL) the SourceMage people wanted me to relicense the original guide -- which I merely told them "do what you want, I'm out". That was when I learned I didn't know jack about licensing and I wasn't about to commit to something I didn't understand. The cause of the SGL split was directly cause by a lack of understanding of the GPL --or-- the dude losing control and going bat-shits about it (yes, I was there... he essentially acted like a baby and getting ticked that someone would fork his code), but had he understood the GPL -- this wouldn't have happened.

I can easily see an O'Reilly on this. I would write one, but I lack a real legal understanding of it. Perhaps I can start on it in the wiki and just let it go from there...