Re: Thoughts on Licences

On 2004-08-25 09:08:49 +0100 Noel Welsh <noelwelsh-/[email protected]> wrote:

> Basically, we want to say that no commercial entity can
> compete against our chosen publisher [...]

This anti-commercialism really stinks. It's bad for programs and it's 
bad for books. It really is distressing to see what I thought was a 
free software group take this line. We know that there are commercial 
publishers who have published more liberally licensed books (Network 
Theory and O'Reilly to name two - do you think GNU Press do?) so why 
is it necessary to do this?

Even with an anti-commercial clause, this group is still not going to 
be able to engage in a standard publishing contract. Standard 
contracts have terms like: "The Author hereby grants to the publishers 
the sole and exclusive right and licence throughout the world for the 
legal term of copyright: (a) to produce print publish and sell the 
Work or any abridgement of the Work or any part of the Work in volume 
form (b) To grant licences sell or otherwise exploit (i) Anthology 
digest and quotation rights (ii) Serial rights (iii) Broadcasting 
rights (iv) Television rights (v) Film rights (vi) Recording rights 
(vii) Translation rights (viii) All other rights not specifically 
referred to otherwise in this Agreement but which may now or hereafter 
be capable of exploitation by an owner of copyright in the Work."

That's copied from a real book contract that I have lying around the 
office. The publisher published a range of paperback internet 
tutorials. It's not particularly unusual when it comes to copyright, 
as far as I can tell. Has anyone else here actually checked the 
copyright terms of a publisher's book contract? I didn't spot it in 
the archives.

> But people, just trust us!  :-D

In god we trust. All others must bring data.

-- 
MJR/slef    My Opinion Only and not of any group I know
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
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