Re: About Glossary licensing
Francesco Poli wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Let's not complicate further: we are talking about digital works, where
> the concepts of source and object are much clearer and easier to apply.
When you're dealing in digital material you can almost always fake up
some sort of source code/object code distinction, but that doesn't
necessarily mean it's helpful to do that. The GPL is fantastic for
things that behave like computer software - but most things don't.
When a programmer creates (say) a GTK+ WinAmp clone, the copyrightable
stuff that they're most interested in applying a license to is in the
details of the source code, where users don't directly encounter it.
On the other hand, when a reviewer publishes a blog article about that
app, it isn't the way the HTML <div style="nav"> tags are organised
behind the scenes that they want to apply a license to, it's the words
that readers get to see. If anything it's more like a painting than
a piece of code.
>> 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.
>
> Well, then I do not see why you raised the objection.
Because tracking down the originals and checking that enough rewriting
was done in each case is extra work.
> If only facts, ideas, and concepts were taken from elsewhere, while the
> expression that describes them is yours, you are the copyright holder
> for the part of the Glossary written by you (which is the majority, if
> I understand correctly).
Going and studying the diffs, I see I was underestimating the
proportion of the entries that were added by me; there are few that
haven't had at least minor typo-fixes.
> In order to license the Glossary under the GPLv2 (or under the Expat,
> if you prefer), you simply have to get in touch with the copyright
> holders for the other (minor) parts and get their consent...
And in fact most of them have email addresses. But writing to
complete strangers and badgering them into relicensing something they'd
forgotten they wrote in the first place is hardly my idea of a fun way
of passing my free time.
There would also presumably need to be a huge prominent warning header
saying something like:
This wiki page is explicitly licensed under the GNU GPL version 3, and
all future contributions will be taken to be licensed under the same
terms, overriding any default preference you may have expressed on
your wiki homepage or elsewhere.
Are there any existing examples of pages like this?
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
Reply to: