OpenBSD Journal

OpenBSD PF User's Guide is free

Contributed by dhartmei on from the more-free dept.

Nick Holland and Joel Knight, the authors of the OpenBSD PF User's Guide, have released their work under a BSD license. This allows the excellent document to be used in the same way as the source code and man pages: by anyone, for any purpose.

"Documentation must be free" is not as common a creed as you might expect, even among otherwise pure Open Source projects. If you take a close look, you'll often find copyright statements and no license, which, by copyright law, means all rights are reserved, and redistribution and modification are not allowed.

Nick's and Joel's generous gift now allows other projects (like FreeBSD, which imported pf recently) to stand on giants' shoulders and expand the work freely. The BSD license makes it a true gift, as the receiver is not obligated in any way. We hope, though, that others will join us in this spirit, and free their changes, too.

The full license, found in the HTML source, reads:

Copyright (c) 2003, Nick Holland 
Copyright (c) 2003, 2004, Joel Knight 

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this documentation for
any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the
above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL
WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS DOCUMENTATION INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR
PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER
TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR
PERFORMANCE OF THIS DOCUMENTATION

The commit message reads:

Changes by:	nick@cvs.openbsd.org	2004/05/06 19:55:24

Log message:
Add an OpenBSD license to the PF User's Guide.
Concept and breakdown of copyrights agreed to by Joel Knight and myself,
license assistance millert@, ok deraadt@.
Thanks to both Nick and Joel, for their on-going great work, and for sharing it like this.

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By Anonymous Coward (68.210.20.102) on

    if understood......? this license means that someone could take the content, put it into format for publishing to paper print the book and put on a shelf at the bookstores and not have to pay a dime to anyone for the source but only to include appropriate statements... of course kicking a percentage back to openbsd proj in respect to authors would be appropriate...

    Comments
    1. By Fábio Olivé Leite (156.153.255.236) on

      Yep, just like it is with the code. "Free as in free".

    2. By jose (204.181.64.2) on http://monkey.org/~jose/

      the most important piece is that they cannot claim authorship. the BSD license allows one to use and reproduce/redistribute the material and derivatives but you MUST keep the original acknowledgements. i'm very upset when i see people think that open source gives them a license to steal. not that you are of that mindset, but a few people are. it's all about the credit ...

  2. By Nick Holland (68.43.115.33) nick@holland-consulting.net on http://www.openbsd.org/faq/

    I'd just like to make it clear: Joel gets top credit here. While I started the PF User's Guide, it was going nowhere fast until Joel stepped in and really Made it Happen. He's a great guy to work with, too. :)

    Comments
    1. By joel knight (205.206.119.83) enabled@myrealbox.com on

      I just want to say that Nick makes it really easy to contribute to the documentation effort. He's also a big reason why the web page docs are at such a high level. :-)

      Comments
      1. By Brad (216.138.200.42) brad at comstyle dot com on

        Between nick@ and jmc@ our documentation is just getting that much better.

  3. By Anonymous Coward (68.124.163.80) on

    Wow...thanks.

  4. By Clint (24.131.187.140) on

    Speaking of the wonderful faq..... any chance we'll get the IPSEC section back at some point?

    Comments
    1. By henning (213.128.133.129) henning@openbsd on

      U fix it... the FAQ will have an IPsec section again as soon as somebody steps up and writes one.

      Comments
      1. By ViPER (213.84.93.41) viper@dmrt.net on http://www.dmrt.net

        That's pretty hard when you *NEED* help configuring it yourself don't you think :) heheheh

        Comments
        1. By tedu (128.12.75.69) on

          well, if you figure it out, write down what you did. i don't use ipsec, so don't expect me to write the faq for it.

    2. By Nick Holland (68.43.115.33) nick@holland-consulting.net on http://www.openbsd.org/faq/

      Doesn't look like it.

      This is a highly involved topic. Even if I sat down, learned everything I need to know to bring it up to date, I lack the application for it to keep it up to date, so the past problems would quickly return. No one has stepped up to offer much more than either a re-hash of the existing docs, or promises of "something good" that never showed up. Anything that was done here would have to closely involve the developers who maintain IPsec in OpenBSD, and that's been missing. In order for a topic like this to be in the FAQ, the developers have to help out, like the PF people do with the PF FAQ.

      That being said, there may be a (*ick*) how-to style (*gack*) entry at some point, however I suspect that by OpenBSD 3.6, faq13.html will be back, but not about IPsec.

    3. By ted (160.79.240.52) on

      cool

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