discuss: SCO copyright violations on LDP
Subject:
Re: SCO copyright violations on LDP
From:
Tabatha Marshall ####@####.####
Date:
7 Aug 2003 00:38:40 -0000
Message-Id: <1060217076.10760.46.camel@mysticchild>
I'm hoping to determine the impact on the LDP, but more importantly, the
authors.
The concept of being allowed to print a copy of an LDP doc from SCO's
site, ONLY provided it contains the SCO copyright notice, is
preposterous. And that's what it states on the link to SCO's legal
page, quite clearly.
The GFDL, one of the most common documentation licenses, specifies that
docs can be copied and distributed for profit or not, as long as the
GFDL and copyright is preserved, and no other conditions are added to
this license. This also applies to publicly displayed documents (such
as those on SCO's site).
I know the other open source licenses aren't as comprehensive as the
GFDL, but in this case, it still seems like a violation to me against
any of the LDP documents at SCO containing the GFDL.
Tab
On Wed, 2003-08-06 at 17:15, Colin Watson wrote:
> If the Debian HOWTO packages suddenly carry the requirement that
> everybody who installs a web server that happens to export
> /usr/share/doc/HOWTO to the world must make sure to have the newest
> versions of the packages installed (and perhaps even more than that,
> since now and then I don't have time to update the packages for a few
> months, and I never got a favourable response to my request to update
> the packages in stable), then I will regretfully have to ask for the
> packages to be removed from the distribution immediately. I don't think
> I can reasonably expect our users to accept that requirement; since text
> versions of the HOWTOs are in our standard installation, some of them
> may not even have noticed that their web servers are publishing the
> collection in the first place!
> Sorry to put it so baldly, but it's the way it is from our side. I
> really hope the LDP doesn't take this road, as it would be a great
> departure from the liberal terms used by kind authors up to now. I do
> understand the concern, though. Many documents have some text like "To
> read the most recent version of this document, see <link>", which seems
> like a pretty good compromise to me? Sysadmins don't suddenly become
> legally liable for forgetting to update a web site every now and then,
> and readers get a pointer to the newest version which they can follow if
> they're interested.
>
> Restricting advertising: dunno. Are terms like "The original author's
> (or authors') name(s) may not be used to assert or imply endorsement of
> the resulting document without the original author's (or authors')
> permission" (LDPL v2.0) or "Neither the name of the University nor the
> names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
> derived from this software without specific prior written permission"
> (BSD licence) good enough? You could regard adding advertising to a
> document as modification.
>
> Cheers,
--
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)
