Re: Licensing trick with SeaMonkey help documentation possible?

On 23.02.2009 0:05 Uhr, Frank Hecker wrote:
> 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.

I'd like to add that we consider translations to be derivative work in 
general.

Axel