discuss: User Authentication Howto - license issue?
Subject:
Re: User Authentication Howto - license issue?
From:
Floris Lambrechts ####@####.####
Date:
3 Apr 2004 19:22:16 -0000
Message-Id: <406F0EDE.5040007@softhome.net>
Machtelt Garrels wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Floris Lambrechts wrote:
>
>
>>You talk about the license of the article, and it's not FDL or something
>>similar. It says, among other things, "Any translation or derived work
>>must be approved by the author in writing before distribution."
>>I did not have this permission from him, so I think I have violated the
>>license by just fixing the document!
>>
>>Is this true? Can we not update the document until we hear from the author?
>>You can read the license here:
>>http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/User-Authentication-HOWTO/x40.html#AEN51
> This is a question for David Lawyer, I guess.
I think it's a pretty clear license term...
By fixing his document and uploading it, I have made a 'derived work'.
And the author did not approve that in writing before distribution.
Since I'm now officially a copyright violator anyway, I decided I might
as well do it well... I committed a new revision of the
User-Authentication-HOWTO to CVS, with fixed broken and outdated
external links. (Therefore a CC of this mail to ####@####.####
However.
If I can't manage to contact the author, we (both I and tldp) are
violating his copyright. I see 3 things we can do
1. leave it like it is
It's not very likely that the author is going to sue, and if he does,
there's not much he will get.
Copyright violations happen all the time, and they are only a problem
if the copyright holder feels there's a problem.
2. roll-back to version 0.5 (CVS revision 1.1)
Which does not contain my fixes but is not updated and *can not* be
updated because the author disappeared.
3. remove this howto from tldp
(Because it can not be maintained)
I like none of the options :-(
Hopefully somebody sees another solution?
regards
floris
