Re: About Glossary licensing [was: Re: Questions about BTS SOAP interface "pending" attribute]
I'm fairly sure I don't understand how traditional copyright law
applies to wikis in the first place. If the default is a nonfree
license that doesn't grant anybody the right of modification, doesn't
that make all contributors criminals automatically?
Francesco Poli wrote:
> I am hesitant about diving into a long explanation, because I am afraid
> it would drive the discussion far away into off-topic territory for this
> list.
> So, to cut a long story short: availability of source code is crucial
> for any kind of Free Work
This may well be true for the kinds of Free Works that C programmers
produce, but if I create an oil painting, a license that tries to
describe the situation in terms of source code and object code is just
introducing irrelevant complications.
> You are basically saying that the Glossary is made up of material
> copied from various places either without permission or with untracked
> (and possibly mutually incompatible) licenses.
The *information* comes from any number of sources. But as I
understand it the raw facts in a reference book aren't subject to
copyright anyway; it's only a problem if the presentation is copied
too, and the glossary has had quite a lot of rewriting.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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