1:01 p.m.
On Tue, Oct 06, 2009 at 01:22:46PM +1000, Ruediger Landmann wrote:
On 10/06/2009 09:47 AM, Jeffrey Fearn wrote:
>Mikhail Gusarov wrote:
>>IANAL, but this can be specified in single file, like
>>Common_Content/common/README: "all the data in this directory is under
>>GFDL", but better check with your legal department.
>
>Rudi is talking with the legal people about this, we expect a
>separate update message shortly.
Thanks Jeff :)
Red Hat legal has identified a number of ambiguities around the
licenses involved: specifically, the relationship between the
license of the package against the license of the text in the Common
Content files, against the license of books that users produce that
incorporates that Common Content.
One particular problem is that as things stand right now, if the
text in Common Content is licensed under the GFDL, this means that
any book that anybody builds in Publican that incorporates that text
must also be licensed under the GFDL (or a compatible license).
This, in turn, creates an immediate incompatibility in any brand
package that loads a legal notice with a different license...
Legal's solution is that we include a note that explicitly spells
out that whatever license appears between the <legalnotice> tags in
the Legal_Notice.xml file applies only to the books into which it is
pre-loaded, and not the text of the Legal Notice file itself.
Furthermore, they suggest pretty much exactly what you suggested,
Mikhail -- we find as permissive a license as possible for the
Common Content files, and license them under that, separately from
the rest of the contents of the package.
So far we've looked at the WTFPL[1], CC0[2], and the so-called GNU
All-Permissive License[3].
We had to regretfully reject the WTFPL on the basis that some people
might find it offensive. :( This is a real shame, because it
basically stands for everything that we need the license on the
Common Content files to stand for...
When we read the GNU "All-Permissive" License, it turned out to be
not what it claims, since rather than being "all permissive", it
requires re-users to leave the license in place. Relicensing is
therefore as difficult as it is now.
Although CC0 is cumbersome (check out the full legal code! [4]), it
seems to do what we need it to do. It's therefore the current
favourite as license of choice for the Common Content files, unless
anyone on the list knows of a similarly broad license with less
legalese?
Cheers
Ruediger
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL
[2] http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
[3] http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/License-Notices-for-Other-File...
[4] http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode
I'm forwarding a copy of this to the fedora-legal-list -- Spot may be
able to suggest something appropriate to cover the publican Common
Content.
We need this license to be compatible with inclusion in works produced
by Fedora Docs, and in works that incorporate content from the Fedora
wiki, right? If CC0 can coexist peacefully in that role with the new
CC licensing used in both those cases, it does seem like the best
contender.
--
Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/
gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
1:14 p.m.
New subject: [publican-list] Adjusting copyright information
On 10/06/2009 02:01 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
We need this license to be compatible with inclusion in works
produced
by Fedora Docs, and in works that incorporate content from the Fedora
wiki, right? If CC0 can coexist peacefully in that role with the new
CC licensing used in both those cases, it does seem like the best
contender.
Assuming that the CC licensing is "CC-BY-SA" (Attribution Share-Alike),
right?
I've asked Red Hat Legal here, just to make sure my instincts are right.
~spot
1:46 p.m.
New subject: [publican-list] Adjusting copyright information
On Tue, Oct 06, 2009 at 02:14:12PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
On 10/06/2009 02:01 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> We need this license to be compatible with inclusion in works produced
> by Fedora Docs, and in works that incorporate content from the Fedora
> wiki, right? If CC0 can coexist peacefully in that role with the new
> CC licensing used in both those cases, it does seem like the best
> contender.
Assuming that the CC licensing is "CC-BY-SA" (Attribution Share-Alike),
right?
I've asked Red Hat Legal here, just to make sure my instincts are right.
Correct, the Docs project is switching to CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-October/msg0000...
--
Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/
gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
2:38 p.m.
New subject: [publican-list] Adjusting copyright information
On 10/06/2009 02:46 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Tue, Oct 06, 2009 at 02:14:12PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> On 10/06/2009 02:01 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>> We need this license to be compatible with inclusion in works produced
>> by Fedora Docs, and in works that incorporate content from the Fedora
>> wiki, right? If CC0 can coexist peacefully in that role with the new
>> CC licensing used in both those cases, it does seem like the best
>> contender.
>
> Assuming that the CC licensing is "CC-BY-SA" (Attribution Share-Alike),
> right?
>
> I've asked Red Hat Legal here, just to make sure my instincts are right.
Correct, the Docs project is switching to CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-October/msg0000...
Yeah, neither I nor Red Hat Legal sees any problem with using the
CC-Zero license in conjunction with CC-BY-SA, as described previously in
this thread.
~spot
12:34 p.m.
New subject: [publican-list] Adjusting copyright information
On Tue, 6 Oct 2009 14:01:52 -0400
"Paul W. Frields" <stickster(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 06, 2009 at 01:22:46PM +1000, Ruediger Landmann wrote:
> So far we've looked at the WTFPL[1], CC0[2], and the so-called GNU
> All-Permissive License[3].
>
> We had to regretfully reject the WTFPL on the basis that some people
> might find it offensive. :( This is a real shame, because it
> basically stands for everything that we need the license on the
> Common Content files to stand for...
Agreed, this is unfortunate. :)
> When we read the GNU "All-Permissive" License, it
turned out to be
> not what it claims, since rather than being "all permissive", it
> requires re-users to leave the license in place. Relicensing is
> therefore as difficult as it is now.
I think this is not a correct interpretation, as the mere fact that a
license requires preservation of a licensing notice doesn't mean that
it has a copyleft effect; this is well established in FOSS tradition as
evidenced by BSD and MIT and Apache (etc.) licensing. Nevertheless, it
is true that CC-0 requires no preservation of the CC-0 text; indeed
it logically couldn't because in CC-0 the copyright holder is
at least attempting to abandon all ability to enforce copyright on the
work.
No objection to CC-0 though, which in the end is probably no worse than
and probably better than traditional simple public domain dedications.
- RF
6:44 p.m.
New subject: [publican-list] Adjusting copyright information
>>>> "RF" == Richard Fontana
<rfontana(a)redhat.com> writes:
[Offensiveness of WTFPL text]
RF> Agreed, this is unfortunate. :)
Might I suggest simply modifying the offensive language? I know license
proliferation is bad, but if the result is legally equivalent and serves
the necessary purpose then I don't see any reason not to just do it.
- J<
7:06 p.m.
New subject: [publican-list] Adjusting copyright information
Oh, and don't please don't ever CC a closed list. I got a nice
auto-reject message for my trouble.
- J<
8:21 p.m.
New subject: [publican-list] Adjusting copyright information
[removed publican-list from cc]
On Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:44:54 -0500
Jason L Tibbitts III <tibbs(a)math.uh.edu> wrote:
[re: WTFPL]
Might I suggest simply modifying the offensive language? I know
license proliferation is bad, but if the result is legally equivalent
and serves the necessary purpose then I don't see any reason not to
just do it.
Certainly Fedora should be prepared to accept licenses that are
equivalent to the WTFPL just as it accepts the WTFPL. Also
there's no question that the WTFPL has earned an important place in
FOSS culture despite being rarely used. However, this is a
situation where Red Hat is acting as copyright holder and/or outbound
licensor. For *Red Hat code* we generally avoid licenses that are not
commonly used (i.e., that aren't associated with substantial project
communities), and we generally avoid licenses that are modified
versions of other licenses, unless the modified version is itself a
commonly-used license. Of course the mere fact that a license is
popular doesn't mean it's better, but we see a lot of value in
promoting license standardization.
For those reasons (and not any sense of primness), we wouldn't
encourage our developers to apply the WTFPL to Red Hat-copyrighted code,
and we'd certainly oppose applying some sanitized WTFPL derivative to
Red Hat-copyrighted code. (On the other hand we encourage our
developers to make licensing decisions that are informed by concerns
about their users.)
- RF
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8 comments
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participants (4)
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Jason L Tibbitts III -
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Richard Fontana -
Tom Callaway