Re: Licensing of (was: Name for) a website about programming language design
- From: "Tony" <nospam@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2011 16:19:06 -0600
"Robbert Haarman" <comp.lang.misc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:20110205142835.GB2639@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi everyone,
I have read the posts about the licensing for the content of the site
about programming languages, and have some thoughts of my own to share.
First, it is clear that licensing is a hot topic, so I am probably
going
to step on a few people's toes at some point. Apologies in advance.
Secondly, I am not a copyright lawyer, and certainly not an expert on
how
copyright works everywhere around the world, so my ideas of how things
work from a legal perspective may be completely off. With that out of
the way, here are my actual ideas:
It seems to me that it would be best to look at what some successful
user-contributed content sites do, and do the same. Not only because
that evidently works, but also because this makes life easier for
would-be
contributors - and the less of an effort we require from contributors,
the better.
So what examples do we have? I think _the_ example of a successful
user-contributed content website is Wikipedia. Another example would be
Slashdot, which may not have as much mindshare, but has been around
for a very long time. And, of course, there is Usenet, which has been
around even longer, and which we all post to - although I am not sure
the copyright/licensing issues are clearly defined here.
What is clear is that there should be some understanding that content
contributed by users will be displayed on the site. As the Slashdot
terms of use state:
With respect to text or data entered into and stored by
publicly-accessible site features such as forums, comments and bug
trackers ("Geeknet Public Content"), the submitting user retains
ownership of such Geeknet Public Content;
and
In each such case, the submitting user grants Geeknet the
royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable
license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create
derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content
(in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works
in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all
subject to the terms of any applicable license.
In other words, user-contributed content stays owned by the user, but
Geeknet gets to do what they want with it - including transfering those
rights to others.
Wikipedia's terms of use regarding licensing are a bit too large to
quote here, but they can be found at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use What it boils down to
is that if you contribute text, you license that text to Wikimedia
under
the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License,
and, because that's what they originally started out with, also the
GNU Free Documentation License.
On Usenet, as I said, I don't think the copyright/licensing issues are
completely clear. If I had to guess, I would say that, by posting to
Usenet, you implicitly grant permission to publish your message, but
you remain the copyright holder and otherwise retain all rights.
Any of these approaches seems fine to me, and, given the number of
contributors to each of these services, evidently a lot of other people
are fine with them, too.
Two things: First, people (er, sheeple) regularly "sign their rights
away", as they have been conditioned to do so. Being "fine with them" may
just be naivete. Second, who is to say what the content quality would
have been (higher) had it not been withheld by the intellectual property
holder because of terms that were unacceptable.
The above is not to say that just having the right TOA will garner
higher-quality content, but is to suggest that having a TOA that is
unacceptable will indeed prevent some people from posting certain
material or even posting at all. (There is something fundamental hinted
at in this statement but I don't want to "go there" at this point).
(Aside: Remember, Wikipedia doesn't push any boundary as far as creating
or synthesizing. It only documents what is "common" knowledge. That is
obviously vastly different from a site where persons discuss new things,
create, synthesize, etc.)
My vote is for keeping it simple - the site
gets the right to publish your contribution in whole and in part, and
otherwise the contributor stays the owner and retains responsibility.
Wikipedia's terms are a bit complex because of the two licenses, but
if we copy their model, we could reduce that to just a Creative Commons
license.
I don't recommend using a software license, because I imagine our
content will mostly be text - with source code which could likely be
used under fair use. If the need arises, we can always introduce a
license specifically for the program code later. However, I want to
avoid complicating things by having multiple licenses.
Regards,
Bob
.
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- From: Robbert Haarman
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