11:32 p.m.
Hi,
I think the following issue is partly one of policy so I am first
raising it here. For those who don't know who I am, I am a Red Hat
lawyer and among other things I deal with software and documentation
copyright and licensing issues.
Formal Fedora-branded documentation uses a default legal notice that
among other things uses the following universal copyright notice:
Copyright © <YEAR> Red Hat, Inc. and others.
followed by, typically, a CC BY-SA license notice and some trademark
notice boilerplate.
If I remember correctly, this is implemented via the Fedora Publican
brand package.
This form of copyright notice is found elsewhere in the Fedora
universe, as in the footer of fp.o web pages.
I recognize the convenience of a universal legal notice for purposes
of automating generation of documentation, but there is something
about it that bothers me. Consider two examples: the Fedora 14 Amateur
Radio Guide and the Fedora 15 Musician's Guide. From what I can tell,
the actual authors of these documents are not, and were not at time of
authorship, Red Hat employees. (Moreover, it is not necessarily the
case, in any given situation, that Red Hat would be copyright holder
of all or some of the text even if they had been Red Hat employees,
but for simplicity let's ignore that issue.)
Now, the copyright notice is correct nonetheless because Red Hat holds
copyright on the Fedora logo image, and, as I recall, all
documentation includes some standard language (like the typographical
conventions section) over which, let us assume, Red Hat has some
copyright interest.
Nevertheless, why should a document that was actually written
exclusively by non-Red-Hat employees use "Copyright Red Hat, Inc. and
others" (what a friend of mine has called a "Gilligan's Island
copyright" after the original Gilligan's Island theme song which
famously referred to the important characters of the Professor and
Mary Ann as "and the rest")?
I don't think the Red Hat copyright ownership of the Fedora logo image
justifies the Gilligan's Island copyright notice, as in fact the CC
BY-SA license notice is designed (and perhaps should be improved in
this regard, even though it ought to be obvious) to make clear that
the logo image itself isn't being licensed under CC BY-SA. So if
anything it is the intention for the copyright notice *not* to refer
to the logo. (And, if you want a copyright notice because of the logo,
have a special line saying "Logo copyright <year> Red Hat, Inc.") And
while Red Hat might hold copyright on some small standard portions of
the text, the substantial part of what is creative and expressive in
the examples I gave were written by people unaffiliated with Red
Hat.
So, in the case of at least that subset of Fedora documentation that
is written by those who aren't Red Hat employees (but perhaps, er, the
rest too), what purpose is the Gilligan's Island copyright notice
serving? It doesn't provide the public notice of actual substantial
copyright ownership in at least some cases. It doesn't provide
attribution to the actual human authors. To me, all it really does is
communicate the following:
1) Red Hat has an intimate connection to the Fedora Project.
2) Red Hat is "first among equals" when it comes to attribution for
Fedora project documentation; non-Red-Hat-associated contributors to
Fedora documentation merit only second-class status.
I submit that 1) is already rather obvious to the world and is, if
anything, problematically exaggerated in the public mind. I submit
that 2) is an inappropriate use of a copyright notice even if the
policy were legitimate. Copyright notices aren't supposed to be used
for attribution - I recognize that in free software they often do
serve that purpose - but if they *are* used for attribution,
attribution ought to be given to the human authors. Or to the Fedora
Project as collaborative thing. (A nice thing about CC licenses is
that they decouple attribution from copyright ownership, as in fact
you can see in the default documentation legal notice which states
that attribution is to be given to the Fedora Project -- not Red Hat.)
I submit further that it serves no valid purpose to overemphasize the
degree to which Red Hat is the copyright holder of Fedora
documentation anyway. Fedora contributors do not assign copyright to
Red Hat. If you want to give credit to Red Hat, or overemphasize the
intimacy of the Fedora/Red Hat relationship, do so in some other way:
have a "The Fedora Project is sponsored by Red Hat" line or something
like that (though I don't see the point of that either, and if we
really cared about that I assume we would have had a requirement to
give attribution to Red Hat rather than the Fedora Project).
It may be that the only practical alternative is not to have a
copyright notice at all. That is by no means beyond consideration,
given that copyright notices have rather limited significance anyway.
In the specific examples I noted above, I would say that what little
legal value copyright notices have is not present at all. This could
well be true of other cases.
So I guess I'm interested in knowing whether there is a strong desire
(particularly among those on this list who are not Red Hat employees
yet who have contributed to Fedora documentation) to maintain the
tradition of the Gilligan's Island copyright notice, and whether
alternatives are feasible and preferable. The Musician's Guide shows
that one can prominently credit the principal human author of the
document at the beginning. The Amateur Radio Guide shows that one can
do the same thing but with "The Fedora Documentation Project" as the
author.
If no such strong desire exists, it is my desire to recommend changes
that will eliminate the use of the Gilligan's Island copyright notice
in Fedora documentation.
- Richard
--
Richard E. Fontana
Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel
Red Hat, Inc.
11:58 p.m.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 12:32 AM, Richard Fontana <rfontana(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Hi,
I think the following issue is partly one of policy so I am first
raising it here. For those who don't know who I am, I am a Red Hat
lawyer and among other things I deal with software and documentation
copyright and licensing issues.
Formal Fedora-branded documentation uses a default legal notice that
among other things uses the following universal copyright notice:
Copyright © <YEAR> Red Hat, Inc. and others.
followed by, typically, a CC BY-SA license notice and some trademark
notice boilerplate.
If I remember correctly, this is implemented via the Fedora Publican
brand package.
This form of copyright notice is found elsewhere in the Fedora
universe, as in the footer of fp.o web pages.
I recognize the convenience of a universal legal notice for purposes
of automating generation of documentation, but there is something
about it that bothers me. Consider two examples: the Fedora 14 Amateur
Radio Guide and the Fedora 15 Musician's Guide. From what I can tell,
the actual authors of these documents are not, and were not at time of
authorship, Red Hat employees. (Moreover, it is not necessarily the
case, in any given situation, that Red Hat would be copyright holder
of all or some of the text even if they had been Red Hat employees,
but for simplicity let's ignore that issue.)
Now, the copyright notice is correct nonetheless because Red Hat holds
copyright on the Fedora logo image, and, as I recall, all
documentation includes some standard language (like the typographical
conventions section) over which, let us assume, Red Hat has some
copyright interest.
Nevertheless, why should a document that was actually written
exclusively by non-Red-Hat employees use "Copyright Red Hat, Inc. and
others" (what a friend of mine has called a "Gilligan's Island
copyright" after the original Gilligan's Island theme song which
famously referred to the important characters of the Professor and
Mary Ann as "and the rest")?
I don't think the Red Hat copyright ownership of the Fedora logo image
justifies the Gilligan's Island copyright notice, as in fact the CC
BY-SA license notice is designed (and perhaps should be improved in
this regard, even though it ought to be obvious) to make clear that
the logo image itself isn't being licensed under CC BY-SA. So if
anything it is the intention for the copyright notice *not* to refer
to the logo. (And, if you want a copyright notice because of the logo,
have a special line saying "Logo copyright <year> Red Hat, Inc.") And
while Red Hat might hold copyright on some small standard portions of
the text, the substantial part of what is creative and expressive in
the examples I gave were written by people unaffiliated with Red
Hat.
So, in the case of at least that subset of Fedora documentation that
is written by those who aren't Red Hat employees (but perhaps, er, the
rest too), what purpose is the Gilligan's Island copyright notice
serving? It doesn't provide the public notice of actual substantial
copyright ownership in at least some cases. It doesn't provide
attribution to the actual human authors. To me, all it really does is
communicate the following:
1) Red Hat has an intimate connection to the Fedora Project.
2) Red Hat is "first among equals" when it comes to attribution for
Fedora project documentation; non-Red-Hat-associated contributors to
Fedora documentation merit only second-class status.
I submit that 1) is already rather obvious to the world and is, if
anything, problematically exaggerated in the public mind. I submit
that 2) is an inappropriate use of a copyright notice even if the
policy were legitimate. Copyright notices aren't supposed to be used
for attribution - I recognize that in free software they often do
serve that purpose - but if they *are* used for attribution,
attribution ought to be given to the human authors. Or to the Fedora
Project as collaborative thing. (A nice thing about CC licenses is
that they decouple attribution from copyright ownership, as in fact
you can see in the default documentation legal notice which states
that attribution is to be given to the Fedora Project -- not Red Hat.)
I submit further that it serves no valid purpose to overemphasize the
degree to which Red Hat is the copyright holder of Fedora
documentation anyway. Fedora contributors do not assign copyright to
Red Hat. If you want to give credit to Red Hat, or overemphasize the
intimacy of the Fedora/Red Hat relationship, do so in some other way:
have a "The Fedora Project is sponsored by Red Hat" line or something
like that (though I don't see the point of that either, and if we
really cared about that I assume we would have had a requirement to
give attribution to Red Hat rather than the Fedora Project).
It may be that the only practical alternative is not to have a
copyright notice at all. That is by no means beyond consideration,
given that copyright notices have rather limited significance anyway.
In the specific examples I noted above, I would say that what little
legal value copyright notices have is not present at all. This could
well be true of other cases.
So I guess I'm interested in knowing whether there is a strong desire
(particularly among those on this list who are not Red Hat employees
yet who have contributed to Fedora documentation) to maintain the
tradition of the Gilligan's Island copyright notice, and whether
alternatives are feasible and preferable. The Musician's Guide shows
that one can prominently credit the principal human author of the
document at the beginning. The Amateur Radio Guide shows that one can
do the same thing but with "The Fedora Documentation Project" as the
author.
If no such strong desire exists, it is my desire to recommend changes
that will eliminate the use of the Gilligan's Island copyright notice
in Fedora documentation.
- Richard
Hi Richard,
If I had my druthers, I'd like to see something along the lines of:
'Copyright © <YEAR> Fedora Project' if we used a copyright notice or
perhaps even better:
'Copyright © <YEAR> Fedora Project Contributors'
My initial reaction to your analysis of not needing a copyright notice
is intellectual acknowledgement, but also a thought that it seems
counter-intuitive. I guess that reaction is the question in my mind if
we seem to de-emphasize subconsciously those things that don't have a
clear statement of ownership. I may be alone in that analysis, though,
and I don't really oppose dropping the existing copyright notices, as
I think it has some of the ill unintended consequences you mention.
As for attribution to contributors. I thought long ago that we decided
that author listing was 'The Fedora Documentation Project' at the
beginning of the document (e.g. what's in Author_Group.xml) and to
have a Contributor section as an appendix. This was done for a number
of reasons, but the big one in my mind, is that with a large document
such as the install guide, no one wants to page through 3 pages of
authors, editors, and translators before getting to the content.
Perhaps this has changed. Sadly I can't seem to find the thread in the
archives where we agreed on that, but seems like it was late 2008 or
early 2009 and a discussion started by Karsten. Perhaps I have missed
a change, as I haven't been as active in Docs in the past year or so.
Thanks for bringing the discussion to the list,
--David
9:41 a.m.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 00:58, David Nalley
<david.nalley(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 12:32 AM, Richard Fontana
<rfontana(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think the following issue is partly one of policy so I am first
> raising it here. For those who don't know who I am, I am a Red Hat
> lawyer and among other things I deal with software and documentation
> copyright and licensing issues.
>
> Formal Fedora-branded documentation uses a default legal notice that
> among other things uses the following universal copyright notice:
>
> Copyright © <YEAR> Red Hat, Inc. and others.
>
> followed by, typically, a CC BY-SA license notice and some trademark
> notice boilerplate.
>
> If I remember correctly, this is implemented via the Fedora Publican
> brand package.
>
> This form of copyright notice is found elsewhere in the Fedora
> universe, as in the footer of fp.o web pages.
>
> I recognize the convenience of a universal legal notice for purposes
> of automating generation of documentation, but there is something
> about it that bothers me. Consider two examples: the Fedora 14 Amateur
> Radio Guide and the Fedora 15 Musician's Guide. From what I can tell,
> the actual authors of these documents are not, and were not at time of
> authorship, Red Hat employees. (Moreover, it is not necessarily the
> case, in any given situation, that Red Hat would be copyright holder
> of all or some of the text even if they had been Red Hat employees,
> but for simplicity let's ignore that issue.)
>
> Now, the copyright notice is correct nonetheless because Red Hat holds
> copyright on the Fedora logo image, and, as I recall, all
> documentation includes some standard language (like the typographical
> conventions section) over which, let us assume, Red Hat has some
> copyright interest.
>
> Nevertheless, why should a document that was actually written
> exclusively by non-Red-Hat employees use "Copyright Red Hat, Inc. and
> others" (what a friend of mine has called a "Gilligan's Island
> copyright" after the original Gilligan's Island theme song which
> famously referred to the important characters of the Professor and
> Mary Ann as "and the rest")?
>
> I don't think the Red Hat copyright ownership of the Fedora logo image
> justifies the Gilligan's Island copyright notice, as in fact the CC
> BY-SA license notice is designed (and perhaps should be improved in
> this regard, even though it ought to be obvious) to make clear that
> the logo image itself isn't being licensed under CC BY-SA. So if
> anything it is the intention for the copyright notice *not* to refer
> to the logo. (And, if you want a copyright notice because of the logo,
> have a special line saying "Logo copyright <year> Red Hat, Inc.")
And
> while Red Hat might hold copyright on some small standard portions of
> the text, the substantial part of what is creative and expressive in
> the examples I gave were written by people unaffiliated with Red
> Hat.
>
> So, in the case of at least that subset of Fedora documentation that
> is written by those who aren't Red Hat employees (but perhaps, er, the
> rest too), what purpose is the Gilligan's Island copyright notice
> serving? It doesn't provide the public notice of actual substantial
> copyright ownership in at least some cases. It doesn't provide
> attribution to the actual human authors. To me, all it really does is
> communicate the following:
>
> 1) Red Hat has an intimate connection to the Fedora Project.
>
> 2) Red Hat is "first among equals" when it comes to attribution for
> Fedora project documentation; non-Red-Hat-associated contributors to
> Fedora documentation merit only second-class status.
>
> I submit that 1) is already rather obvious to the world and is, if
> anything, problematically exaggerated in the public mind. I submit
> that 2) is an inappropriate use of a copyright notice even if the
> policy were legitimate. Copyright notices aren't supposed to be used
> for attribution - I recognize that in free software they often do
> serve that purpose - but if they *are* used for attribution,
> attribution ought to be given to the human authors. Or to the Fedora
> Project as collaborative thing. (A nice thing about CC licenses is
> that they decouple attribution from copyright ownership, as in fact
> you can see in the default documentation legal notice which states
> that attribution is to be given to the Fedora Project -- not Red Hat.)
>
> I submit further that it serves no valid purpose to overemphasize the
> degree to which Red Hat is the copyright holder of Fedora
> documentation anyway. Fedora contributors do not assign copyright to
> Red Hat. If you want to give credit to Red Hat, or overemphasize the
> intimacy of the Fedora/Red Hat relationship, do so in some other way:
> have a "The Fedora Project is sponsored by Red Hat" line or something
> like that (though I don't see the point of that either, and if we
> really cared about that I assume we would have had a requirement to
> give attribution to Red Hat rather than the Fedora Project).
>
> It may be that the only practical alternative is not to have a
> copyright notice at all. That is by no means beyond consideration,
> given that copyright notices have rather limited significance anyway.
> In the specific examples I noted above, I would say that what little
> legal value copyright notices have is not present at all. This could
> well be true of other cases.
>
> So I guess I'm interested in knowing whether there is a strong desire
> (particularly among those on this list who are not Red Hat employees
> yet who have contributed to Fedora documentation) to maintain the
> tradition of the Gilligan's Island copyright notice, and whether
> alternatives are feasible and preferable. The Musician's Guide shows
> that one can prominently credit the principal human author of the
> document at the beginning. The Amateur Radio Guide shows that one can
> do the same thing but with "The Fedora Documentation Project" as the
> author.
>
> If no such strong desire exists, it is my desire to recommend changes
> that will eliminate the use of the Gilligan's Island copyright notice
> in Fedora documentation.
>
>
> - Richard
Hi Richard,
If I had my druthers, I'd like to see something along the lines of:
'Copyright © <YEAR> Fedora Project' if we used a copyright notice or
perhaps even better:
'Copyright © <YEAR> Fedora Project Contributors'
I spoke with Spot on this while at SELF. Because Fedora Project isn't
a legal entity it cannot hold a copyright.
More in my next message...
9:46 a.m.
On 06/24/2011 08:11 PM, Eric "Sparks" Christensen wrote:
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 00:58, David Nalley
> Hi Richard,
>
> If I had my druthers, I'd like to see something along the lines of:
> 'Copyright © <YEAR> Fedora Project' if we used a copyright notice or
> perhaps even better:
> 'Copyright © <YEAR> Fedora Project Contributors'
I spoke with Spot on this while at SELF. Because Fedora Project isn't
a legal entity it cannot hold a copyright.
IANAL
That is only a valid objection if the suggestion was (c) Fedora Project
but (c) Fedora Project contributors says something different. It means
*individual* Fedora project contributors hold the copyright to their
contributions which is certainly possible and is the case here.
Rahul
9:51 a.m.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 10:46, Rahul Sundaram <metherid(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 06/24/2011 08:11 PM, Eric "Sparks" Christensen wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 00:58, David Nalley
>> Hi Richard,
>>
>> If I had my druthers, I'd like to see something along the lines of:
>> 'Copyright © <YEAR> Fedora Project' if we used a copyright notice
or
>> perhaps even better:
>> 'Copyright © <YEAR> Fedora Project Contributors'
> I spoke with Spot on this while at SELF. Because Fedora Project isn't
> a legal entity it cannot hold a copyright.
IANAL
That is only a valid objection if the suggestion was (c) Fedora Project
but (c) Fedora Project contributors says something different. It means
*individual* Fedora project contributors hold the copyright to their
contributions which is certainly possible and is the case here.
Correct. But if we do that then we should just list *who* holds the copyrights.
9:56 a.m.
On 06/24/2011 08:21 PM, Eric "Sparks" Christensen wrote:
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 10:46, Rahul Sundaram
<metherid(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> IANAL
>
> That is only a valid objection if the suggestion was (c) Fedora Project
> but (c) Fedora Project contributors says something different. It means
> *individual* Fedora project contributors hold the copyright to their
> contributions which is certainly possible and is the case here.
Correct. But if we do that then we should just list *who* holds the copyrights.
I am not sure if that is a legal requirement. If it is and if it is
not easy to list all the contributors, then is dropping the copyright
info and just listing the license of the document feasible? Richard
Fontana can clarify that
Rahul
10:05 a.m.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 10:56, Rahul Sundaram <metherid(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 06/24/2011 08:21 PM, Eric "Sparks" Christensen wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 10:46, Rahul Sundaram <metherid(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> IANAL
>>
>> That is only a valid objection if the suggestion was (c) Fedora Project
>> but (c) Fedora Project contributors says something different. It means
>> *individual* Fedora project contributors hold the copyright to their
>> contributions which is certainly possible and is the case here.
> Correct. But if we do that then we should just list *who* holds the copyrights.
I am not sure if that is a legal requirement. If it is and if it is
not easy to list all the contributors, then is dropping the copyright
info and just listing the license of the document feasible? Richard
Fontana can clarify that
Correct. In the US I believe that you have to opt out of your
copyright (i.e. everything is copyrighted by default) but that is
different in other countries. Just licensing the work may be
acceptable but we need a better way to do our attribution and we need
to provide guidance to those that may want to use our work for their
own work.
--Eric
11:46 a.m.
>
> That is only a valid objection if the suggestion was (c) Fedora Project
> but (c) Fedora Project contributors says something different. It means
> *individual* Fedora project contributors hold the copyright to their
> contributions which is certainly possible and is the case here.
Correct. But if we do that then we should just list *who* holds the copyrights.
I personally think that's unmaintainable. And here's why:
First, with some of our guides that have seen organic growth over
releases there are scores of people with copyright claims. Who is
going to ensure that it's right, up to date, and who is going to want
to page through it? Secondly, we have translators who don't get
attribution until the next release for their work.
Do we really want this kind of copyright notice:
(c) Copyright 200x-2011 Fabian Affolter, Amanpreet Singh Alam,
Jean-Paul Aubry, David Barzilay, Domingo Becker, Subhransu Behera,
Michał Bentkowski, Rahul Bhalerao, Runa Bhattacharjee, Teta Bilianou,
Vitor Vilas Boas, Lucas Brausch, Hector Daniel Cabrera, David
Cantrell, Guido Caruso, Guillaume Chardin, Nikos Charonitakis, Chester
Cheng, Tom K. C. Chiu, Glaucia Cintra, Fabien Decroux, Hans De Goede,
Claudio Rodrigo Pereyra Diaz, Piotr Drąg, Damien Durand, Stuart Ellis,
Ali Fakoor, Felix I, Tony Fu, Paul W. Frields, Paul Gampe, Sree
Ganesh, Dimitris Glezos, Guillermo Gómez, Igor Gorbounov, Rui Gouveia,
Kiyoto James Hashida, Severin Heiniger, Xi Huang, Ryuichi Hyugabaru,
Jayaradha N, Chris Johnson, Eunju Kim, Michelle J Kim, Miloš
Komarčević, Alexey Kostyuk, Daniela Kugelmann, Rüdiger Landmann,
Magnus Larsson, Christopherus Laurentius, Florent Le Coz, Erick Lemon,
Andy Liu, Wei Liu, Yelitza Louze, Gan Lu, Jens Maucher, Igor Miletić,
Noriko Mizumoto, Jeremy W. Mooney, Enikő Nagy, Igor Nestorović, David
Nalley, John Nguyen, Manuel Ospina, Janis Ozolins, Ankit Patel,
Davidson Paulo, Ani Peter, Amitakhya Phukan, Silvio Pierro, Micha
Pietsch, José Nuno Pires, Piotr Podgórski, Yulia Poyarkova, Shankar
Prasad, Rajesh Ranjan, Tommy Reynolds, Tim Richert, Dominik Sandjaja,
Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan, Mohsen Saeedi, Tian Shixiong, Audrey Simons,
Keld Simonsen, Jared K. Smith, Espen Stefansen, Sulyok Péter, Sümegi
Zoltán, Francesco Tombolini, Timo Trinks, Dimitris Typaldos, Göran
Uddeborg, Michaël Ughetto, Francesco Valente, Karsten Wade, Sarah
Saiying Wang, Geert Warrink, Elizabeth Ann West, Tyronne
Wickramarathne, Ben Wu, Xiaofan Yang, Yuan Yijun, Diego Búrigo
Zacarão, Izaac Zavaleta, Red Hat Inc, and others.
That's the list of contributors on the F15 Install Guide. The above
list (since it doesn't have all of the translators) isn't complete,
and it has some errant contributions (assuming that RHT employees who
contribute work don't retain copyright, and then we have people like
Paul Frields who have contributed as employee and non-employee). Add
to that that we have a good chunk of information on the wiki and no
good way to list who the contributors there are.
So I am going to say something that is likely to be unpopular. I think
we should go with (c) Copyright 2011 Fedora Project Contributors as
that would cover both RHT contributions and individual contributors,
or perhaps as Richard suggested, no explicit copyright notice. It's
less effort to maintain, it scales to other places like the wiki, and
our websites. That said, I am currently doing precious little of the
work in Docs, so my opinion may hold little weight.
I am also somewhat worried that we really aren't talking about
copyright notices, and if that's the case we should discuss the real
issue.
--David
12:23 p.m.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 12:46, David Nalley
<david.nalley(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>>
>> That is only a valid objection if the suggestion was (c) Fedora Project
>> but (c) Fedora Project contributors says something different. It means
>> *individual* Fedora project contributors hold the copyright to their
>> contributions which is certainly possible and is the case here.
>
> Correct. But if we do that then we should just list *who* holds the copyrights.
I personally think that's unmaintainable. And here's why:
First, with some of our guides that have seen organic growth over
releases there are scores of people with copyright claims. Who is
going to ensure that it's right, up to date, and who is going to want
to page through it? Secondly, we have translators who don't get
attribution until the next release for their work.
IRT translators and their work: This is another reason why translators
should own their work instead of handing it back to us for
publication. The translators do put their copyright information on
their PO files so it's there in the source but their name should
appear with the copyright notice on the *translated* document. Since
they didn't contribute to the English version, unless they contribute
outside of their translation duties, then they don't hold any
copyright to that version.
Do we really want this kind of copyright notice:
(c) Copyright 200x-2011 Fabian Affolter, Amanpreet Singh Alam,
...
Zacarão, Izaac Zavaleta, Red Hat Inc, and others.
That might be a bit extreme... :)
That's the list of contributors on the F15 Install Guide. The above
list (since it doesn't have all of the translators) isn't complete,
and it has some errant contributions (assuming that RHT employees who
contribute work don't retain copyright, and then we have people like
Paul Frields who have contributed as employee and non-employee). Add
to that that we have a good chunk of information on the wiki and no
good way to list who the contributors there are.
When we take information from the wiki and move it into a guide we are
really not attributing the work back to the original author which is
in violation of the CC-BY-SA license.
So I am going to say something that is likely to be unpopular. I
think
we should go with (c) Copyright 2011 Fedora Project Contributors as
that would cover both RHT contributions and individual contributors,
or perhaps as Richard suggested, no explicit copyright notice. It's
less effort to maintain, it scales to other places like the wiki, and
our websites.
Yes, it scales well but doesn't provide information to someone that
may want to use our information and needs to know who to attribute it
to.
That said, I am currently doing precious little of the
work in Docs, so my opinion may hold little weight.
You have licensed your works, that we still use, to us (Fedora) so
your opinion holds as much weight as the rest of us that have
contributed.
I am also somewhat worried that we really aren't talking about
copyright notices, and if that's the case we should discuss the real
issue.
To me this is a multi-faceted discussion of both copyright, licensing,
and the associated attribution. Now if there are other issues afoot
then we should be made aware of that sooner than later.
--Eric
12:33 a.m.
On 06/24/2011 02:32 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
If I remember correctly, this is implemented via the Fedora Publican
brand package.
Not quite.
All that the Fedora Publican brand package does is implement a variable
(a DocBook entity, &HOLDER;). The value of this variable is stored in a
separate file for each book. For example, the Amateur_Radio_Guide.ent
file currently contains:
<!ENTITY PRODUCT "Fedora Documentation">
<!ENTITY BOOKID "amateur-radio-guide">
<!ENTITY YEAR "2010">
<!ENTITY HOLDER "Red Hat, Inc. and others">
The &HOLDER; entity can be set to absolutely anything for any book, and
its contents will appear in the book's legal notice.
Cheers
Rudi
1:41 a.m.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 12:32:04AM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
Now, the copyright notice is correct nonetheless because Red Hat
holds
copyright on the Fedora logo image, and, as I recall, all
documentation includes some standard language (like the typographical
conventions section) over which, let us assume, Red Hat has some
copyright interest.
As to the latter material, I had forgotten that it is released under
CC0. So that provides no justification for a Red Hat copyright notice.
- RF
10:02 a.m.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 00:32, Richard Fontana <rfontana(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up.
[0] http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/docs/2011-June/013440.html
--Eric
I recognize the convenience of a universal legal notice for purposes
of automating generation of documentation, but there is something
about it that bothers me. Consider two examples: the Fedora 14 Amateur
Radio Guide and the Fedora 15 Musician's Guide. From what I can tell,
the actual authors of these documents are not, and were not at time of
authorship, Red Hat employees. (Moreover, it is not necessarily the
case, in any given situation, that Red Hat would be copyright holder
of all or some of the text even if they had been Red Hat employees,
but for simplicity let's ignore that issue.)
Don't RH employees retain copyright of their work? I thought I ran
into this problem when I was trying to get some text from RH for the
Security Guide.
Nevertheless, why should a document that was actually written
exclusively by non-Red-Hat employees use "Copyright Red Hat, Inc. and
others" (what a friend of mine has called a "Gilligan's Island
copyright" after the original Gilligan's Island theme song which
famously referred to the important characters of the Professor and
Mary Ann as "and the rest")?
Are we, the Fedora contributors, hoping that Red Hat will stand up for
us if there is ever a problem with copyright infringement? Is this
even a valid assumption? As we've seen with the recent Righthaven
cases, if you don't own the copyright then you can't sue for
infringement. I don't know how this would work with Fedora
documentation.
2) Red Hat is "first among equals" when it comes to
attribution for
Fedora project documentation; non-Red-Hat-associated contributors to
Fedora documentation merit only second-class status.
I submit that 1) is already rather obvious to the world and is, if
anything, problematically exaggerated in the public mind. I submit
that 2) is an inappropriate use of a copyright notice even if the
policy were legitimate. Copyright notices aren't supposed to be used
for attribution - I recognize that in free software they often do
serve that purpose - but if they *are* used for attribution,
attribution ought to be given to the human authors. Or to the Fedora
Project as collaborative thing. (A nice thing about CC licenses is
that they decouple attribution from copyright ownership, as in fact
you can see in the default documentation legal notice which states
that attribution is to be given to the Fedora Project -- not Red Hat.)
Attribution is a problem that I wrote about on the list not too long
ago.[0] In my opinion we aren't doing attribution correctly.
Unfortunately CC-BY-SA doesn't provide any specific requirement on
*how* to attribute the work (thanks to Spot for pointing that out).
We need to make a standard for doing this in Fedora and perhaps write
a SOP for others that want to use Fedora documentation on how we want
attribution to be done.
If no such strong desire exists, it is my desire to recommend
changes
that will eliminate the use of the Gilligan's Island copyright notice
in Fedora documentation.
I think we should seriously visit the entire copyright and licensing
issues and try to address them. At this point I think attribution is
a problem and, from your thoughts, the licensing wording isn't
correctly implemented.
11:15 p.m.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 11:02:17AM -0400, Eric "Sparks" Christensen wrote:
Attribution is a problem that I wrote about on the list not too long
ago.[0] In my opinion we aren't doing attribution correctly.
Unfortunately CC-BY-SA doesn't provide any specific requirement on
*how* to attribute the work (thanks to Spot for pointing that out).
I think you're right that this is an issue for work that originates in
the wiki.
I note that when you make a wiki edit you are presented with this
language:
Please note that all contributions to FedoraProject are considered
to be released under the Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (see
FedoraProject:Copyrights for details). If you do not want your
writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do
not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this
yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free
resource. Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!
Incidentally I don't like how this is worded, now that I look at it,
but anyway you could deal with the attribution issue within such a
notice. Wikipedia does that - when you do an edit, it displays a
notice that says:
You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under
the Creative Commons license.
FWIW I read CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported (as applied to settings we're
dealing with here) as saying that, by default, you have to supply the
name of the 'Original Author' "if supplied", as attribution.
- RF
10:45 a.m.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 12:32:04AM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
Nevertheless, why should a document that was actually written
exclusively by non-Red-Hat employees use "Copyright Red Hat, Inc. and
others" (what a friend of mine has called a "Gilligan's Island
copyright" after the original Gilligan's Island theme song which
famously referred to the important characters of the Professor and
Mary Ann as "and the rest")?
The friend in question has asked for attribution as the coiner of the
"Gilligan's Island copyright" phrase. Fair enough: he is none other
than Bradley Kuhn, board member of the Free Software Foundation and
President of the Software Freedom Conservancy (http://sfconservancy.org/).
- RF
3:14 p.m.
on 06/24/2011 12:32 AM Richard Fontana wrote:
I think the following issue is partly one of policy so I am first
raising it here. For those who don't know who I am, I am a Red Hat
lawyer and among other things I deal with software and documentation
copyright and licensing issues.
Formal Fedora-branded documentation uses a default legal notice that
among other things uses the following universal copyright notice:
Copyright ©<YEAR> Red Hat, Inc. and others.
followed by, typically, a CC BY-SA license notice and some trademark
notice boilerplate.
For those of you who don't know me, I am also a Red Hat lawyer and
thought I'd pipe up too. I don't want Richard to have all the fun.
From a legal perspective, the copyright notice is just an artifact
under U.S. law only (I'm aware of no other country where it matters)
that has very little legal significance. It has no relevance to whether
there is a license or the scope of the license; as Richard pointed out
it is not meant to be used as attribution although commonly is; it has
no effect on the enforceability of a copyright infringement claim
except, possibly affecting the amount of monetary damages; and it is not
a defense to any copyright infringement claim. That said, I agree with
the comments that people expect to see one. If nothing else, it is a
reminder that copyright ownership must be considered in evaluating
whether to use the work and how it may be used. If the notice has some
legal significance in other countries, defined either by law or by
common understanding, I would love to know more about it.
The U.S. statute defines the elements of a copyright notice, which are
the © symbol, the word "Copyright" or the abbreviation "Copr.," the
year
of first publication of the work, and (the critical question here) "the
name of the owner of copyright in the work, or an abbreviation by which
the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation
of the owner." So keeping in mind that from a legal perspective it
really doesn't matter much if we have a copyright notice, and that there
is latitude in how one identifies the owner, I would vote for "Fedora
Project Contributors." I think that's accurate for the purposes of the
statutory requirements and, since the actual names are available on a
contributions page, it is more than enough to identify the authors for
those people who use the copyright notice as a lead for finding the
actual copyright owners. And it's an improvement over "Red Hat, Inc.,"
who is not the copyright owner in many cases.
As pointed out by others, for those using content under the CC-BY-SA
license we should state clearly somewhere how we would like the
attribution. This doesn't have to be the same as the copyright notice,
it can be anything we want. I think the failure to provide it means
only that the licensee is relieved of his or her obligation to give
attribution, but I'm happy to be corrected on that.
I also agree with Richard that we should carve out the copyright in the
logo from any license grant.
TIFWIW. From a Red Hat legal team perspective this is Richard's
purview, not mine, so whatever he says trumps me.
Pam
--
Pamela S. Chestek
Senior IP Attorney
Red Hat, Inc.
1801 Varsity Drive
Raleigh, NC 27606
919-754-4473
pchestek(a)redhat.com
10:07 p.m.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 04:14:32PM -0400, Pamela Chestek wrote:
The U.S. statute defines the elements of a copyright notice, which
are the ©
symbol, the word "Copyright" or the abbreviation "Copr.," the year of
first
publication of the work, and (the critical question here) "the name of the
owner of copyright in the work, or an abbreviation by which the name can be
recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of the owner." So
keeping in mind that from a legal perspective it really doesn't matter much if
we have a copyright notice, and that there is latitude in how one identifies
the owner, I would vote for "Fedora Project Contributors." I think that's
accurate for the purposes of the statutory requirements and, since the actual
names are available on a contributions page, it is more than enough to identify
the authors for those people who use the copyright notice as a lead for finding
the actual copyright owners.
I'm okay with that.
As pointed out by others, for those using content under the CC-BY-SA
license we
should state clearly somewhere how we would like the attribution.
This is already done in the default Fedora docs CC BY-SA notice by
designating the Fedora Project as the "Attribution Party" (a term used
in CC BY-SA 3.0). I suppose we could be clearer about what that
actually means.
I also agree with Richard that we should carve out the copyright in
the logo
from any license grant.
Yes, the original intent of the current notice language was to
indicate that but I think it can be made clearer.
The entire legal notice actually needs to be revisited because of the
FPCA too (I assume contributors to docs are typically in cla-done or
whatever it's called). The idea of Red Hat being "the licensor of this
document" may have made sense under the old Fedora CLA regime but I
think it does not make sense under the FPCA (because the inbound
content license is now CC BY-SA by default).
- RF
10:10 p.m.
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On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 11:07:29PM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 04:14:32PM -0400, Pamela Chestek wrote:
> As pointed out by others, for those using content under the CC-BY-SA license we
> should state clearly somewhere how we would like the attribution.
This is already done in the default Fedora docs CC BY-SA notice by
designating the Fedora Project as the "Attribution Party" (a term used
in CC BY-SA 3.0). I suppose we could be clearer about what that
actually means.
Well, it doesn't actually say *how* we want the attribution. As Spot pointed out to
me attribution could be in the form of a "thank you" on a post card mailed to
me. I'm okay with the *who* but saying we want our attribution to be in the form of
text within the work should be written somewhere, IMO.
> I also agree with Richard that we should carve out the copyright
in the logo
> from any license grant.
Yes, the original intent of the current notice language was to
indicate that but I think it can be made clearer.
The entire legal notice actually needs to be revisited because of the
FPCA too (I assume contributors to docs are typically in cla-done or
whatever it's called). The idea of Red Hat being "the licensor of this
document" may have made sense under the old Fedora CLA regime but I
think it does not make sense under the FPCA (because the inbound
content license is now CC BY-SA by default).
Yes, all Docs contributors have signed the CLA and now the FPCA.
- --Eric
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10:09 a.m.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 23:10, Eric H. Christensen
<eric(a)christensenplace.us> wrote:
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On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 11:07:29PM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 04:14:32PM -0400, Pamela Chestek wrote:
> > As pointed out by others, for those using content under the CC-BY-SA license we
> > should state clearly somewhere how we would like the attribution.
>
> This is already done in the default Fedora docs CC BY-SA notice by
> designating the Fedora Project as the "Attribution Party" (a term used
> in CC BY-SA 3.0). I suppose we could be clearer about what that
> actually means.
Well, it doesn't actually say *how* we want the attribution. As Spot pointed out to
me attribution could be in the form of a "thank you" on a post card mailed to
me. I'm okay with the *who* but saying we want our attribution to be in the form of
text within the work should be written somewhere, IMO.
> > I also agree with Richard that we should carve out the copyright in the logo
> > from any license grant.
>
> Yes, the original intent of the current notice language was to
> indicate that but I think it can be made clearer.
>
> The entire legal notice actually needs to be revisited because of the
> FPCA too (I assume contributors to docs are typically in cla-done or
> whatever it's called). The idea of Red Hat being "the licensor of this
> document" may have made sense under the old Fedora CLA regime but I
> think it does not make sense under the FPCA (because the inbound
> content license is now CC BY-SA by default).
Yes, all Docs contributors have signed the CLA and now the FPCA.
- --Eric
So I haven't seen any further discussion on
this issue. I also
haven't seen any formal tasking.
I'll make the following proposal:
1. We remove the copyright tag from the Fedora branding in Publican.
2. We add an attribution appendix to all guides that include those
that have worked on the information contained within the guide.
3. We remove the author list from the front of the guides.
4. Clarify in the license text that attribution must be done within the work.
Anything else? Changes to my proposal?
--Eric
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11:24 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Pamela Chestek <pchestek(a)redhat.com> wrote:
I thought the consensus was to have a copyright notice that listed
the
owner as "Fedora Project contributors"?
I thought it was as well. I'm no attorney (and don't play one on IRC
or email), but I don't see a pressing reason *not* to have a copyright
notice.
--
Jared Smith
Fedora Project Leader
11:32 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:24:36PM -0400, Jared K. Smith wrote:
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Pamela Chestek
<pchestek(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> I thought the consensus was to have a copyright notice that listed the
> owner as "Fedora Project contributors"?
I thought it was as well. I'm no attorney (and don't play one on IRC
or email), but I don't see a pressing reason *not* to have a copyright
notice.
I don't see a pressing reason not to have one if the one Pam suggested
is acceptable.
- RF
3:50 p.m.
On 06/29/2011 10:02 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:24:36PM -0400, Jared K. Smith wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Pamela Chestek <pchestek(a)redhat.com> wrote:
>> I thought the consensus was to have a copyright notice that listed the
>> owner as "Fedora Project contributors"?
> I thought it was as well. I'm no attorney (and don't play one on IRC
> or email), but I don't see a pressing reason *not* to have a copyright
> notice.
I don't see a pressing reason not to have one if the one Pam suggested
is acceptable.
Precisely.. Legalese should be avoided as much as possible. Can we take
this uniform, consistent approach and apply it to other places like the
installer, website, media artwork etc instead of doing it for the docs?
Rahul
7:06 p.m.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 02:20:23AM +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
On 06/29/2011 10:02 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:24:36PM -0400, Jared K. Smith wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Pamela Chestek <pchestek(a)redhat.com>
wrote:
>>> I thought the consensus was to have a copyright notice that listed the
>>> owner as "Fedora Project contributors"?
>> I thought it was as well. I'm no attorney (and don't play one on IRC
>> or email), but I don't see a pressing reason *not* to have a copyright
>> notice.
> I don't see a pressing reason not to have one if the one Pam suggested
> is acceptable.
Precisely.. Legalese should be avoided as much as possible. Can we take
this uniform, consistent approach and apply it to other places like the
installer, website, media artwork etc instead of doing it for the docs?
As a replacement specifically for "Red Hat, Inc. and others" where the
latter happens to be used today, in Fedora contexts? Sure (though I
assume that is off-topic for this list). Indeed I have already
suggested it for the website in the thread you started on the
advisory-board list.
It shouldn't necessarily replace *other* forms of copyright notices
that exist in the Fedora universe. The specific issue is the
Gilligan's Island copyright notice, nothing else.
--
Richard E. Fontana
Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel
Red Hat, Inc.
9:35 p.m.
On 06/30/2011 05:36 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
As a replacement specifically for "Red Hat, Inc. and
others" where the
latter happens to be used today, in Fedora contexts? Sure (though I
assume that is off-topic for this list). Indeed I have already
suggested it for the website in the thread you started on the
advisory-board list.
It shouldn't necessarily replace *other* forms of copyright notices
that exist in the Fedora universe. The specific issue is the
Gilligan's Island copyright notice, nothing else.
Yes. Agreed. This is currently used in all the places I mention and I
will file bug reports
Rahul
11:28 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Eric Christensen
<eric(a)christensenplace.us> wrote:
1. We remove the copyright tag from the Fedora branding in Publican.
2. We add an attribution appendix to all guides that include those
that have worked on the information contained within the guide.
3. We remove the author list from the front of the guides.
4. Clarify in the license text that attribution must be done within the work.
2-4: okay
1: I'm with Pam and Jared
--
Ben Cotton
11:34 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:28:03PM -0400, Ben Cotton wrote:
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Eric Christensen
<eric(a)christensenplace.us> wrote:
> 1. We remove the copyright tag from the Fedora branding in Publican.
> 2. We add an attribution appendix to all guides that include those
> that have worked on the information contained within the guide.
> 3. We remove the author list from the front of the guides.
> 4. Clarify in the license text that attribution must be done within the work.
>
2-4: okay
1: I'm with Pam and Jared
Someone (maybe Rudi :) should remember to bug me about revising the
legal notice, which I will do in collaboration with Pam. Not really a
pressing issue.
- RF
11:34 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:34, Richard Fontana <rfontana(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:28:03PM -0400, Ben Cotton wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Eric Christensen
> <eric(a)christensenplace.us> wrote:
>
> > 1. We remove the copyright tag from the Fedora branding in Publican.
> > 2. We add an attribution appendix to all guides that include those
> > that have worked on the information contained within the guide.
> > 3. We remove the author list from the front of the guides.
> > 4. Clarify in the license text that attribution must be done within the work.
> >
> 2-4: okay
> 1: I'm with Pam and Jared
Someone (maybe Rudi :) should remember to bug me about revising the
legal notice, which I will do in collaboration with Pam. Not really a
pressing issue.
- RF
So that's how you get folks to chime in on a topic... :)
Yep, you guys are correct with the copyright notice.
I'll start a ticket and provide a patch for #1 today, then. #2 and #3
is an internal Docs thing... #4 will be up to Pam and Richard.
Thanks guys for the help!
--Eric
11:48 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:34, Eric "Sparks" Christensen
<sparks(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:34, Richard Fontana
<rfontana(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:28:03PM -0400, Ben Cotton wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Eric Christensen
>> <eric(a)christensenplace.us> wrote:
>>
>> > 1. We remove the copyright tag from the Fedora branding in Publican.
>> > 2. We add an attribution appendix to all guides that include those
>> > that have worked on the information contained within the guide.
>> > 3. We remove the author list from the front of the guides.
>> > 4. Clarify in the license text that attribution must be done within the
work.
>> >
>> 2-4: okay
>> 1: I'm with Pam and Jared
>
> Someone (maybe Rudi :) should remember to bug me about revising the
> legal notice, which I will do in collaboration with Pam. Not really a
> pressing issue.
>
> - RF
So that's how you get folks to chime in on a topic... :)
Yep, you guys are correct with the copyright notice.
I'll start a ticket and provide a patch for #1 today, then. #2 and #3
is an internal Docs thing... #4 will be up to Pam and Richard.
Thanks guys for the help!
--Eric
Actually, #1 isn't in publican-fedora. It's actually derived from the
<guide>.ent file. So this will need to be manually changed on all the
guides.
--Eric
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