discuss: SCO copyright violations on LDP
Subject:
Re: SCO copyright violations on LDP
From:
Tabatha Marshall ####@####.####
Date:
7 Aug 2003 00:16:45 -0000
Message-Id: <1060215761.10761.24.camel@mysticchild>
On Wed, 2003-08-06 at 17:02, David Lawyer wrote:
> They have every right to distribute them per the licenses. LDP requires
> that the license allow free distribution.
No question they have the right to redistribute. But it seems like
they're trying to re-license the work.
> No it's not. You weren't here when I did a search on the Internet for
> one of my HOWTOs and found that the vast majority of them were old
> versions. There were several hundred sites distributing old versions.
> But worse that that, some sites add advertising to them. All this
> misuse of LDP docs could be stopped if the license prohibited this. But
> LDP will not allow such licenses (should this be changed?).
> So misuse of LDP docs is rampant and there is nothing we can do about it
> since all the licenses we use allow it. Any license that restricts such
> abuses would be considered by FSF (and Debian) to be non-free. I think
> they need to reconsider this issue.
Is a violation dependent on which license is used in a specific
document, or on the collection as a whole? I quoted some parts of the
GFDL, but since I don't have any knowledge of the applicable laws on the
matter, I'm interested in a legal opinion.
> We could write a nice letter to SCO and ask that they keep them
> up-to-date. SCO doesn't even have to reply. But then, what about the
> hundreds of other sites that do the same thing? If an author doesn't
> want SCO to distribute her work, the only way for the author to stop
> SCO would be to change the license (which would only apply to future
> versions so it wouldn't have any effect on the old stuff there now).
> But authors are not permitted to change the license this way, since it
> wouldn't meet LDP's criteria and the revised doc couldn't be kept in our
> collection.
In this particular case, SCO is in the spotlight right now because of
their actions, which is probably why they have come to the forefront
more than other sites who have outdated documentation. Are the other
sites trying to apply another copyright and license to the LDP
collection like SCO is?
I see what you mean about the changing of the license, and the negative
impact the old documents carry. But the GFDL seemed to show specific
areas where SCO may have crossed a line. Is there going to be a
difference depending on which license is used for which document? Or do
you think that despite the wording of the GFDL, SCO has abided by all of
the copyrights and licenses in the collection (or if they're even
obligated to)?
Tab
--
Tabatha Marshall
Web: www.merlinmonroe.com
Linux Documentation Project Review Coordinator (http://www.tldp.org)
Linux Counter Area Manager US:wa (http://counter.li.org)
