Re: Release Notes: license clarification
On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 07:00:56PM +0200, W. Martin Borgert wrote:
> I ask hereby - and in private mails following this one - all
> authors of the release notes to place their contribution to the
> release notes under the GNU General Public license (version 2 or
> higher) by an GPG-signed e-mail to
> debian-doc@lists.debian.org and/or 332782@bugs.debian.org. Many
> thanks for your collaboration.
>
> If I cannot get positive answers within, hm, let's say three
> weeks, from most main authors, I'll remove all text and start
> the release notes from scratch :~(
>
> Authors mentioned in the release notes:
>
> Josip Rodin (joy)
Why do I have to be on top of the list of copyright mischief?! ;)
I believe that the unanimous attitude of all editors of this document has
always been that they don't have any particular reason or right to restrain
use and distribution of the text, because the release notes are inherently a
collaborative effort, the writers "only" describe the release, they don't
themselves create something which is absolutely worth claiming copyright on;
indeed, nobody has done that.
Obviously the implicit copyright "all rights reserved" would apply by default,
but given that all contributions were explicitly published by all of the
authors, I think that considering the work to be released into the public
domain is a perfectly reasonable legal scenario, until decided otherwise.
If you get all the contributors who have claimed authorship (even if they
haven't claimed copyright) to consistently and explicitly license the work
under the GPL, then that's another reasonable option for the future.
I hereby confirm that my edits can be distributed under the GNU General
Public License version 2. (That was the version I used back then and
of which I'm sure; I haven't fully investigated version 3 so I'd rather
defer that.)
--
2. That which causes joy or happiness.
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