Continuing the discussion from Rate Limits for Let's Encrypt:
It would be great to include this with clients and misc documents as-is, or slightly reformatted.
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Considering the fact that they could be changed again at some point without warning, it would be best to just link there than include something that could become outdated.
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If it is CC/Attribution then there would be a required link to the source text (instead of just a suggested link + disclaimer).
The point of bundling the text, not just linking, is to allow for “offline” work.
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Certificate issuance doesn’t work offline anyway. 
You don’t need to interact with the CA to build against it’s API or integrate a client into your system. When you’re dealing with rate-limits, it has more to do with internal book-keeping and scheduling than the CA. In fact, none of the integrated tests on my rate-limit tracking and scheduling even require talking to the CA.
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I think it makes sense to cover our docs with an free license the same way we do with our source code. I’ll check in with @josh on that.
I do agree with @cool110, though: Even though we will probably license our docs freely, I’d still encourage you to link to them rather than bundle them, since they’re likely to change.
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Well the intended use is a file that reads Something like:
LetsEncrypt published rate limits at ___
ratelimits are subject to constant change
the following was accurate on ____
Ratelimits text
It just seems silly to redocument limits.
The reason for doing this is the client tracks requests to
Stay under limits.
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Since facts aren’t copyrightable anyway (despite what the NFL and MLB commissioners think), there doesn’t seem to be any need for any particular license. I don’t need (and don’t have) a license from LE to write a wiki page saying that LE currently imposes a rate limit of 20 certs/domain/week.
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That is also a good point @danb35! Though I think @jvanasco is asking about copying the particular expression of facts on that rate limit page, since it makes more sense to copy directly than to rephrase.
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Exactly. danb35 is correct, the facts aren't copyrightable... but the prose describing the ratelimits is.
It would fall under fair-use to cite a paragraph as-is, and one could argue that the usage in my context is fair use as well. However, I'm still talking about copy/pasting the entirety of a post as-is... so I'd rather have explicit permission.
The reason why I brought up the CC/Attribution is because that essentially requires a link back to the documentation and (depending on the license) doesn't allow for changes to the text.
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Josh has updated the description page for the Documentation category to indicate a CC license: About the Documentation category
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Thanks! This is great!
FYI, if you end up doing packages of the client for debian/unbuntu you should not include any docs. and link back to them or provide a separate package/repo debian doesn’t consider most of the CC licenses free because of the non-commerical or attribution requirements. a lot of packages get held up or threatened for removal from that.
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The client docs are mainly stored in the client repo, and so are covered by the Apache license there.
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I think we should note that all forum content is already licensed as CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0: https://community.letsencrypt.org/tos#3
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