[Fedora-legal-list] good/bad v. approved/not-approved

[Jilayne Lovejoy]

Hi all,


As has been mentioned here prior, Richard and I are having a look at the 
Licensing part of the Wiki with an eye towards any updates and 
improvements, as well as moving that to the Fedora Docs (along with 
David C's work on the database for the license info).

Recently Richard posted here regarding an attempt to better define the 
Fedora license categories in terms of what constitutes a "good" license. 
He referenced the use of the terminology of "good" and "bad" to
indicate 
whether a license is approved for use in Fedora or not.

I wanted to raise that separately b/c as we go through the 
documentation, how to best explain things in the clearest way comes up.  
It'd be helpful to hear people's views on this.

Historically - "good" has meant the license is approved for use in 
Fedora; "bad" has meant the license is not approved for use in Fedora; 
and then there are also three nuanced categories related to fonts, 
documentation, and content which mean that certain licenses are only 
approved for use in that context, but not otherwise approved.

How do people feel about the use of "good", "good-for-fonts",
"bad", etc 
to describe these categories?  Would simply using "approved", 
"approved-for-fonts", "not-approved", etc. be easier to understand?

I'll throw in my opinion here, since I'm asking for that of others: I'm 
kind of mixed on this.  I always thought the good/bad indicator was kind 
of nice in it's informality. However, now that I'm looking more closely 
at documentation, sometimes the use of good and bad can end up reading 
oddly. Practically speaking, I think use of "approved" and 
"not-approved" might end up being easier to understand. Good/bad also 
also has a greater connotation of judgement versus simply "approved" - 
which implies more closely that it must be approved for something. So, I 
guess I'd lean towards simply using "approved" and
"not-approved".

Given that "good" and "bad" are historical for the Fedora licensing 
documentation - what are your thoughts on this?

Jilayne