Re: Attribution with CC-BY-SA 3.0

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

(Any chance you could use more believable name in your From field?)

Zoot Zoot <zootzootzootzoot@gmail.com> writes:

> The idea would not be to require them to inform the user that the
> version is incomplete, but rather to have them state upfront that the
> piece of the software that *we* contributed can be acquired free of
> charge from our website.

Copyright has a limited scope (though the trend in recent years is to
massively increase this scope). The recipient only needs a license for
actions reserved to the copyright holder. The license can discuss other
actions, but the recipient is not bound to terms for those actions if
copyright doesn't cover them.

I think a description of a copy of a work for sale is outside the scope
of copyright on the work. So you will probably have to use other
remedies for that – such as the eBay feedback mechanism about the item
or vendor.


As for this work (the game “0 AD”), the GPL has a provision (§5.d) that,
once the work is actually executed by someone, a copyright notice
presented to the user must not be removed:

    5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.
    […]

    d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display
    Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive
    interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your work
    need not make them do so.

The term “Appropriate Legal Notices” is defined (§0):

    An interactive user interface displays "Appropriate Legal Notices"
    to the extent that it includes a convenient and prominently visible
    feature that (1) displays an appropriate copyright notice, and (2)
    tells the user that there is no warranty for the work (except to the
    extent that warranties are provided), that licensees may convey the
    work under this License, and how to view a copy of this License. If
    the interface presents a list of user commands or options, such as a
    menu, a prominent item in the list meets this criterion.

So it seems you can add an Appropriate Legal Notice to the interactive
user interface, as a way of making the provenance of the work properly
discoverable by the recipient.

-- 
 \         “I'm beginning to think that life is just one long Yoko Ono |
  `\   album; no rhyme or reason, just a lot of incoherent shrieks and |
_o__)                                      then it's over.” —Ian Wolff |
Ben Finney