[FAmSCo] [Fwd] Possible Red Hat coursework (in PDF) format being posted by a Fedora Ambassador

[David Nalley]

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 8:03 PM, Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 04, 2010 at 07:09:35PM +0200, Joerg Simon wrote:
>> Am 04.08.2010 13:36, schrieb susmit shannigrahi:
>> > Were not we talking about ambassadors conduct for sometime?
>>
>>
>> i think - if Ambassadors do mistakes - even if they claim to have not
>> the Fedora Ambassador Hat on as example - a private mail about the issue
>> should be send to the person. Because Ambassadors stay in public - they
>> are the face of Fedora!
>>
>> Besides all the legal things i would consider RH Course Material
>> provided by an Ambassador an forbidden item even if it not listed
>> exactly by that name.
>
> Joerg, you and Susmit made good points.  I didn't fully address them
> in my earlier reply.  What I meant to say, and didn't do very well,
> was this:
>
> * We don't want any contributors to put inappropriate material on
>  Planet Fedora.  That includes copyrighted material the contributor
>  is not permitted to distribute.
>
> * The FAmSCo should certainly be concerned with the conduct of
>  Ambassadors.  I didn't mean to imply in any way that FAmSCo
>  shouldn't care about these issues.  The Ambassador community has a
>  FAmSCo precisely *because* they trust you to lead in these areas, I
>  trust you too, and I'm sure the new FPL feels the same.
>
> * All Fedora contributors realize that Red Hat is a sponsor of our
>  project and does a lot for us in terms of money, people, etc.  So it
>  seems particularly awkward when a Fedora person visibly violates a
>  Red Hat copyright.  This is especially true in the case of Red Hat's
>  training materials, because *on every page* they have a notice that
>  copying is strictly prohibited.
>
> * It's Red Hat's job to police its copyright, and not Fedora's.  I
>  wouldn't want anyone to mistakenly think that the purpose of Fedora
>  Ambassadors is only to look after Red Hat's interests.  Sure, we all
>  know this is not the case.  But someone who has made an error like
>  this one might make that mistake too.  So (speaking for myself as
>  *former* FPL) I'd rather let Red Hat deal with those problems.
>
> I hope that by explaining I haven't blown this up into a huge issue,
> when it's just one person's mistake.  Does this explanation make
> sense?
>


I don't think this has or will blow up into a huge issue, at least
from FAmSCo's standpoint.
It might be worthwhile for us to find out this person's mentor (if
they have one) and suggest they have a talk about understanding
copyright (regardless of the holder), which even for libre software is
vitally important.

This is an odd case in that our primary sponsor happens to be the
entity whose copyright was ignored, but I'd hope FAmSCo, take the same
position if it was Acme Corp. or any other person/company.