Re: debian book offer -- ideas? authors?
At 02:21 AM 12/12/98 +0000, Martin Wheeler wrote:
>I'm still talking to Laura Lewin (the research/acquisitions editor at IDG
>interested in getting this project going) about this, but perhaps the time
>is ripe for the whole Debian community to express its opinions on how
>such a "product" should be presented, to properly represent the Debian
>community, _before_ any kind of publication is decided on.
>(Not usual, I know; but then neither is the Debian community.)
How about writing it (perhaps as a compilation work) under a license that
grants IDG exclusive rights to sell the printed form. After a time, say
two years, a given version reverts to the GPL. Meanwhile the community
could be writing the next version for publication.
All on-line rights would be retained by the Debian Documentation Project.
The on-line version will be more extensive that the printed version. It
will also link directly to the appropriate documents. It might be wise to
assure that a version of the book can be included on the CD-ROM.
I propose that the royalties be paid by IDG as a charity contribution, into
a special "Debian Documentation Fund". It should be fun figuring out the
mechanisms for spending the money.
It is important to understand that this could be a precedent setting
agreement, because O'Reilly and other publishers might be interested in
similar arrangements on other printed works.
This issue also gets confused by the high degree of overlap with the other
GNU/Linux documentation projects. The issue is further confused by the
SGML, Docbook, etc. questions.
I support this effort because I like being able to get my hands on bound,
printed documentation.
REFERENCED MATERIAL
Here are some definitions useful to the discussion from Section "101.
Definitions" in Title 17 U.S. Code
<http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/title17/1-101.html> defines:
A "collective work" is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or
encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and
independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole.
A "compilation" is a work formed by the collection and assembling
of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or
arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an
original work of authorship. The term "compilation" includes collective works.
A "joint work" is a work prepared by two or more authors with the
intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or
interdependent parts of a unitary whole.
A "pseudonymous work" is a work on the copies or phonorecords of which the
author is identified under a fictitious name.
A "transfer of copyright ownership" is an assignment, mortgage, exclusive
license, or any other conveyance, alienation, or hypothecation of a
copyright or of any of the exclusive rights comprised in a copyright,
whether or not it is limited in time or place of effect, but not including
a nonexclusive license.
--
Copyright(c) 1998 Lyno Sullivan; this work is free and may be
copied, modified and distributed under the GNU Library General
Public License (LGPL) <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lgpl.html> and
it comes with absolutely NO WARRANTY; mailto:lls@freedomain.org
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