Re: Licensing trick with SeaMonkey help documentation possible?

Ricardo Palomares Martí­nez wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> SeaMonkey Council has a list of pending changes in SM help for SM 2.0:
> 
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=423281&hide_resolved=1
> 
> I'm wondering if I could do this?
>   - write documentation for those SM bugs,
>   - adapt it for TB, and post the translated version to our Spanish
> community site TB-docs section, which uses CC-3.0-by-sa
> 
> Would it valid from the licensing POV? I guess that, as the original
> author, I'm free to contribute to SM with whatever license Mozilla
> wants for help (GPl/LGPL/MPL, since it goes to the repository?) and
> "relicense" my own work so it can be posted in the community site.
> But, as I say, I'm just guessing... :-?

[Standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.]

Speaking personally, whatever original documentation you write yourself 
is your own; you hold the copyright, and you can license it however you 
please. In particular, you're free to license it under CC-BY-SA in one 
context and the Mozilla MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license on the other.

> I expect to have different answers depending if we're talking of
> entirely new files for SM help (which I understand not to be
> derivative works at all), new sections on existing SM help files
> (which I'm not so sure), or changes on existing content of SM help
> files (which I understand are derivative works).

If you're modifying existing content in files that are tri-licensed then 
your resulting files are (as you indicated) derivative works and should 
be licensed under the same license. If you're creating new sections 
within an existing help file then from the point of view of the MPL your 
contributions would be Modifications and the resulting file should be 
licensed under the MPL; ditto for the GPL and LGPL, so if the file was 
tri-licensed originally your revised version should be tri-licensed as 
well. However you're also free to take your new sections (assuming 
they're not based on pre-existing material) and license them under 
CC-BY-SA as well, in other contexts. (For example, if you post them to 
the MDC site or whatever.)

> In the end, I intend to reuse my effort to benefit as many Mozilla
> users as possible, no more, no less, so if there is any alternative
> approach (like start by writing the new content in the community site
> and then adapting it to SM help), I'd be happy to know about it.

It doesn't really matter where you put the new content originally, all 
that matters is that it be original content.

Frank

-- 
Frank Hecker
[email protected]