Plone Documentation Licensing FAQ

What is the license for Plone documentation?

Plone documentation is made available under a Creative Commons v 4 Attribution license.

Is this an "open-source" license?

Most "open-source" licenses, such as the GPL, are designed only for software. The Creative Commons license is designed especially for creative works such as documentation, music, videos, etc. Many open-source projects use Creative Commons licenses for their documentation.

Why did the Plone Foundation choose a Creative Commons Attribution license?

The Plone Foundation board considered several license choices, and feels that the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike license best fits the shared goals and values of the Plone community.

Where can I find out more about the Creative Commons license?

The Creative Commons website, at http://creativecommons.org, has a wealth of information on Creative Commons licenses.

Can I translate Plone documentation and put it on my own website?

Yes. We love to see translations of Plone documentation! Just include attribution.

Can I copy Plone documentation and put it on my website?

Yes, so long as you attribute the source.

Can I sell ads on a website that I've copied Plone documentation (or works derived from Plone documentation) onto?

Yes.

I'm a Plone consultant or integrator; can I provide copies of Plone documentation or derived works to my clients?

Yes. Please do.

Can my company or organization put copies of Plone documentation or derived works on our corporate intranet?

Yes.

The Plone.org Terms of Service seems awfully legalistic. What's up with that?

It was written by lawyers. It is a Terms of Service, after all. :-) No, seriously... we have chosen to adapt the extremely thorough Terms of Service created by the Wordpress team (and released under a Creative Commons license!). We know they're a little overkill for Plone, but they are very solid, and have been vetted by very expensive lawyers who send their bills to Wordpress. We think that's both safer and more efficient than writing our own, more narrowly-crafted TOS from scratch, and we'd rather spend our energy making Plone great.

I hate lawyers!

Objection, not a question. Perhaps you should buy a book of lawyer jokes so you always have a snappy insult handy when you run into one.

What if I don't want to grant the Plone Foundation such broad rights to content I upload to Plone.org?

You can choose not to create a Plone.org account and thus not to upload content to Plone.org.

I already have a Plone.org account, but I refuse to accept these new Terms of Service.

Please email us at __________ to request deletion of your account. We're sorry to see you go, and hope you'll reconsider.

Does the Plone.org Terms of Service grant the Plone Foundation any rights to add-on products I upload to Plone.org?

No. Your add-on products are already governed by an open-source license, and the Plone.org Terms of Service does not grant the Plone Foundation any rights beyond those already granted to everyone by your software's existing license.

Is the Plone Foundation going to create commercial works based on user-contributed content on Plone.org?

We have no current plans or intentions to do so. The future is hard to predict.

Does the Plone Foundation ever grant folks the right to use Plone documentation for commercial purposes?

If you have a commercial use in mind that provides significant benefits to the Plone project or community, we invite you to contact the Plone Foundation at board@plone.org. We'd be happy to chat.

Are you going to use my user potrait in ads, like Facebook does?

No. We could probably convince our attorneys that the Terms of Service would let us do something that lame, but any Plone Foundation board members who approved such a policy would almost certainly be swiftly recalled by the Plone Foundation membership.