Re: Licences

I agree on most of the point.


Here are some comments:

On Tue, Aug 24, 2004 at 04:49:17PM -0400, Anton van Straaten wrote:
> > So to sum up, you are telling the potential contributor: "You can
> > put copylefted free material here, but also grant us the right to
> > make a non-free derivate work from it, and you won't get any
> > royalty from it". That's something not very easy to hear.
> 
> I have a few responses to this:
> 
> 1.  This doesn't seem any different to me than what O'Reilly did with the
> Python Cookbook; if I've missed something, someone please set me straight.
> Again, we're not trying to strike a blow for innovative free publishing;
> we're merely trying to maximize the possibility for wide distribution of a
> printed book.

It seems they did the same, though incidentally the license was
MIT-like.


> 3.  Authors of GPL software don't generally get royalties from the sale of
> compilations such as Red Hat Linux, so it's not as though we're depriving
> contributors of something they'd usually be entitled to.

Yes, but one cannot make a non-free derivate of GPL software. Or if
yes, then the copyright holder of such software is likely to have been
paid for that :)


> > Also, Anton said people could anyway print the book from the
> > website. As far as I understand, the book will be different from the
> > website, since it will be the 'value-added' non-free derivate of
> > it. Moreover, if you manage to get the exclusive copyright on the
> > compilation, ie the arrangement of the section, then printing the
> > website in the logical order will be a violation.
> 
> I'm not sure about that.  Printing material from a website for personal use
> would seem to me to qualify as fair use.  If that printed material mirrored
> the compilation, and was then resold, that would be forbidden by the
> compilation copyright.

Something in-between would be copying the manual in quantity for a
classroom. My compilation teacher once printed a copy of the Bison,
Lex and Icon manuals for each student that way (we were around
100). He also actually photocopied some other book I can't remember
the title of.


> Again, O'Reilly seems to have been satisfied with such protection.  I agree
> it's not very strong protection, but it does at least protect against direct
> duplication of the book which our chosen publisher  prints.  Publishers are
> very familiar with compilation copyrights, which apply to many kinds of
> works.

One can also point that O'Reilly is satisfied with the DocBook book
being under the GFDL, and the 2nd edition available even when being
written, so following that argument you need not make the compilation
non-free :)


> > Going free to the end seems to me clearer and more convenient
> > for contributors and people buying the book, and would change
> > few for the publisher.
> 
> If that turns out to be true, and our publisher has no problems with it, I
> don't think there would be any objections to going 100% free.

Well I hope so :)


Thanks,

-- 
Sylvain


-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by Shop4tech.com-Lowest price on Blank Media
100pk Sonic DVD-R 4x for only $29 -100pk Sonic DVD+R for only $33
Save 50% off Retail on Ink & Toner - Free Shipping and Free Gift.
http://www.shop4tech.com/z/Inkjet_Cartridges/9_108_r285