discuss: Documentation licensing
Subject:
Re: Documentation Licensing
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
12 Apr 2004 15:25:11 -0000
Message-Id: <20040412152509.GA2020@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting Glen Turner ####@####.####
[Acknowledging your point that you don't necessarily subscribe to the
cited legal views. Just for the record:]
> However, a fork of the HOWTO could lead to a document
> of insufficient quality, one which reflected poorly
> on our firm but which we would have no way to remedy.
[...]
> From their view, a forkable document was all downside.
> For example, we could be sued for defamation, but could
> offer no mitigation by modifying the currently-distributed
> version of document.
Since the document's entire revision history is on record in CVS, a
complete record of whose wording is whose, down to the bit level, is
accessible to any interested party: The defamation suit would last only
long enough to show the judge LDP's Changelog. Moreover, if any
subsequent modifier _did_ succeed in making your firm look bad, your
firm might well have legal recourse under business tort law.
(I would also expect that software-community social traditions and
courtesy would tend to protect you and your firm: For example,
tradition strongly favours the right of any prior author to, at a
minimum, have his name removed from a work retroactively if he feels it
now poorly reflects his original contribution to it.)
> Interestingly, those legal advisors did "get" free software.
> They just had a life-cycle view of copyrights -- they felt
> that if we maintained a HOWTO then we should hold strict
> control over the contents. And when we wished to cease
> maintaining the HOWTO we should assign the copyright to
> the LDP.
Copyright title is indeed ultimate control and self-protection.
Short of that, I've sometimes used a rather wildly creative concept
invented by my friend (and current _Linux Journal_ editor) Don Marti,
which he calls "reverse basstard copyleft": You may issue derivatives
of this personal essay of mine, provided that you remove all attribution
to me and assert your own authorship in all practical media. (You may
not put words in my mouth, but you may reuse my words in any perverted
way you like as long as you shoulder all the blame.)
Reverse bastard copyleft isn't guaranteed to have any legal validity,
but I offer it for whatever it's worth, as an interesting solution to
the problem.
--
Cheers, "Linux means never having to delete your love mail."
Rick Moen -- Don Marti
####@####.####
