OODL: OC Licence - Copyright Holder
Alain: YES and no. There could be some bickering. A difference of opinion concerning the importance of the contribution made by someone that wishes to be cited as one of the authors. Anthony: Alain, in that event we would have the list decide on what to do. Alain: OK, but what kind of decision-making process are you envisionning? A voting CGI in order to establish the opinion of the majority and act accordingly? This could lead to Majority-Rule. Bottom-line is that we are going to have to discuss the (political) issue of decision-making, as part of the Collaboration section of our group, before, during and after we decide which licencing terms to adopt. Anthony: Our choice would be to reject or accept the patch... Alain: Exactly. The Copyright Holder decides whether patches will be integrated into the Standard Distribution, or not. Anthony: ... because the author owns the rights to it. Alain: Unless he decides that he wants to contribute it and we decide to integrate it into the Standard Distribution. From then on, it is the OC licence prevails. The author cannot change his mind afterwards and retract his contribution. Anthony: If we reject it, we can't add it in. Alain: Right. We cannot add his instance of the idea, as-is or only slightly modified. But it should be noted that ideas are not copyright-able. Only the expression of that idea is copyright-able. Anthony: Now imagine if that was a small fix to a long-standing annoying bug that we rejected. We could _never_ use that code to fix the bug! Even if it were inserting a few lines, we could get hauled into court for using it (or re-writing it after having seen his fix). Alain: If you use his source, then you are infringing his copyright but, on the other hand, if you are merely engineering something similar, then that is perfectly legitimate. If it wasnt, we would be in big trouble with Apple, eh! Anthony: Subjective decisions are not good. Neither is a list of a thousand copyright holders. We still need to get the enforcement licencing questions answered, btw. Alain: I totally agree. Alain: I suggest that the Copyright Holder's mail address be a mailing list that forwards mail to all members that are designated as Copyright Holders. Everyone gets notified, and the mailing list address and server are maintained by the group (forever current). Trouble is, what if someone leaves OpenCard without leaving a new address? We should make sure that we're not stalled then. Alain: What do they do in the case of books written by several authors? I doubt that the editor or distributor are obliged to track down the authors if they change their address. And a missing author would not prevent the book from being sold. Anthony : Hah! I'd call that spam. We'd be sending out thousands of messages a day. Everytime someone sends a message, a hundred copies go out... great. Alain: No ... no ... The Open Source licencing does not require that the authors be contacted. You said so yourself. They would only need to be contacted when someone would like to negotiate licencing terms that are not already provided for ( e.g. an infrequent exception that the Perl Artistic Licence already provides for). Bottom-line is that there is very little need to contact the authors, so there will be very little mail received in this regard. Alain: Incidentally, SPAM is unsollicited junk E-mail that wants you to part with some of your money. Inquiries and licencing negotiations with the authors are not spam, despite the fact that commercialization is the probable goal of parties that are seeking an exception to the OC licence, at the very least because this E-mail is not UN-sollicited. Alain: I may have mis-attributed the above paragraphs. They are either by Anthony or by Uli or a mix of the two. Does not change my comments in any way. _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: OODL: OC Licence - Copyright Holder (long)
At 6:36 PM -0400 on 7/23/99, Alain Farmer wrote: Alain: YES and no. There could be some bickering. A difference of opinion concerning the importance of the contribution made by someone that wishes to be cited as one of the authors. Anthony: Alain, in that event we would have the list decide on what to do. Alain: OK, but what kind of decision-making process are you envisionning? A voting CGI in order to establish the opinion of the majority and act accordingly? This could lead to Majority-Rule. Bottom-line is that we are going to have to discuss the (political) issue of decision-making, as part of the Collaboration section of our group, before, during and after we decide which licencing terms to adopt. I'm afraid that if we vote, it'll be arbitrary. And if we make arbitrary decisions, we will not be liked, to say the least. And if we have enemies, we're more likely to answer in court. Anthony: Our choice would be to reject or accept the patch... Alain: Exactly. The Copyright Holder decides whether patches will be integrated into the Standard Distribution, or not. Anthony: ... because the author owns the rights to it. Alain: Unless he decides that he wants to contribute it and we decide to integrate it into the Standard Distribution. From then on, it is the OC licence prevails. The author cannot change his mind afterwards and retract his contribution. We'd need a signed agreement from anyone who submits a patch. That'd get tedius... and we'd need a way to make sure it was actually the author who signed. I know the FSF does it, but I'd like to get around such. Anthony: If we reject it, we can't add it in. Alain: Right. We cannot add his instance of the idea, as-is or only slightly modified. But it should be noted that ideas are not copyright-able. Only the expression of that idea is copyright-able. Anthony: Now imagine if that was a small fix to a long-standing annoying bug that we rejected. We could _never_ use that code to fix the bug! Even if it were inserting a few lines, we could get hauled into court for using it (or re-writing it after having seen his fix). Alain: If you use his source, then you are infringing his copyright but, on the other hand, if you are merely engineering something similar, then that is perfectly legitimate. If it wasnít, we would be in big trouble with Apple, eh! The reason we're not in trouble is because we've never seen HyperCard source. If we had, and Apple cared, they could not doubt make us answer in court. I don't know who'd win, but it'd be a fight. But a short patch is so easy to remember. The author of the patch, having become our enemy, if sufficently made -- and if we then patched it with anything like his code -- might claim infrigement. And we would have to defend ourselves. In court. You must understand that it's not like a novel. It's a small snippet, maybe a few lines long. And once we read it, we would be unable to implement it ourselves, because it would probably be infringement. We'd have to go through proper procedures -- writing up a description of the idea in English, giving that description to someone who has never seen the patch, and having him implement it. And that's time consuming and, possibly, expensive. And that'd only be a defence in court -- it would not stop a suit. Consider: A person finds a bug -- works on it for a while -- and submits a patch. We then, for whatever reason, reject it. We then implement the same bug fix. This person is _mad_. We denied him his rights in OpenCard and yet (essentially) used his work. If this person happens to be litigation-happy, we're sued. Or if this happened to be someone trying to get voting rights on licencing decisions, we're sued. Or if it is a corporation doing that. When people contribute, they will expect to get the right to vote (as suggested above, by you). And if they don't get it, they will be mad. And if it was signifgicant work -- and expecially if we make some money off of OpenCard -- he may sue. I want as little possibility of lawsuits as possible. Hell, we've already got to deal with the people who have their nice 20-year patents on algorithms. Do you know that due to Unisys we can't use GIF until 2002, when their LZW patent expires? We can't use MPEG until 2013 or so -- because (and you get to picket this group, Uli) Franhaufer(sp?) IIS holds patents on it. These people claim they own a mathematical algorithm, and have exlcusive rights to its use, regardless of independant discovery, for twenty years. Recently, a patent on -- get this -- displaying a cursor with XOR expired (or is it still in effect?). The patent office does not do its job, and instead expects the courts to do it for them. Unfortunately, getting a frivelous patent thrown out costs around $1.5 million. Lastly, the voting itself is a problem. Is there someone to tell me that I, having written Interpreter, accept a patch, I owe to the patch-writer
Re: OODL: OODL - OC Licence - Copyright Holder
At 1:24 PM +0200 on 7/21/99, M. Uli Kusterer wrote: Alain: YES and no. There could be some bickering. A difference of opinion concerning the importance of the contribution made by someone that wishes to be cited as one of the authors. Alain, in that event we would have the list decide on what to do. Our choice would be to reject or accept the patch, because the author owns the rights to it. If we reject it, we can't add it in. Now immagine if that was a small fix to a long-standing annoying bug that we rejected. We could _never_ use that code to fix the bug! Even if it were inserting a few lines, we could get hauled into court for using it (or re-writing it after having seen his fix). Subjective decisions are not good. Neither is a list of a thousand copyright holders. We still need to get the enforcement licencing questions answered, btw. Again, I hope there'll be some sane judgement on the list, and in cases where this lacks, we can decide on-list using votes. And we can get hauled to court for it. Alain: I suggest that the Copyright Holder's mail address be a mailing list that forwards mail to all members that are designated as Copyright Holders. Everyone gets notified, and the mailing list address and server are maintained by the group (forever current). Trouble is, what if someone leaves OpenCard without leaving a new address? We should make sure that we're not stalled then. Hah! I'd call that spam. We'd be sending out thousands of messages a day. Everytime someone sends a message, a hundred copies go out... great.
Re: OODL: OODL - OC Licence - Copyright Holder
At 7:39 PM -0400 on 7/19/99, Alain Farmer wrote: Alain: We have a problem here though. It will be difficult to attribute a precise author for work done collectively. Who gets mentionned? In what order? If a hundred people participated, do they all get cited? If, instead, we decide to declare that OODL is the Copyright Holder, nothing is solved either because the membership of the OODL is in perpetual motion. I don't think it would be possible, because OODL is not a legal entity. And there are the problems with "who is OODL?" And yes, it would be a mess to declare a copyright line with a hundred or so people. It'd be an ever bigger mess, I'd guess, if we ever decided to litigate against someone... Most Open Source projects are copyright by a single person, or by the FSF. But the FSF won't do it, because they'd only use the GPL's.
OODL: OODL - OC Licence - Copyright Holder
Alain: We have a problem here though. It will be difficult to attribute a precise author for work done collectively. Who gets mentionned? In what order? If a hundred people participated, do they all get cited? If, instead, we decide to declare that OODL is the Copyright Holder, nothing is solved either because the membership of the OODL is in perpetual motion. Uli: I think the people who added to a file will them-selves take care that they are mentioned as copyright holders of a part by adding that to the source file. Alain: YES and no. There could be some bickering. A difference of opinion concerning the importance of the contribution made by someone that wishes to be cited as one of the authors. Uli: Of course, the person who then merges all changed sources (or some Version Control Software if we ever get that far) will have to take care to add all names to the file's header. Alain: The collective name would be much easier to deal with than a slew of different copyright holders for each distinct part of OC. Even if the recognition as a co-author were merely honorary, it might still be unruly to deal with so many names. In collective works, it is customary to cite the two principal authors followed by a snippet to indicate that there were other authors. Uli: But there should be a distinction between people who apply small bug fixes and people who actually re-write a good part. A re-write should change the copyright, or at least add to it, while I think fixing a typo should go in the "Thanks To" section w/o giving Copyright to that person. Else we'll be at dozens of Copyright holders in no time. Alain: Agreed, but it might not be that easy to make this distinction because there is a whole range of possibilities between a substantial rewrite and a typo. Uli: Also, we need a clause that specifies what happens if a copyright holder doesn't leave a valid e-mail address. Then the other (c) holders should be entitled to decide w/o that person, or that person may appoint someone to take care of that in his stead. Alain: I suggest that the Copyright Holder's mail address be a mailing list that forwards mail to all members that are designated as Copyright Holders. Everyone gets notified, and the mailing list address and server are maintained by the group (forever current). _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
OODL: OODL - OC Licence - Copyright Holder
PERL: "Copyright Holder" is whoever is named in the copyright or copyrights for the Perl package. Alain: We haven't worked this one out yet. Can we collectively be designated as the Copyright Holder, without incorporating ourselves? Anthony: Any lawyers around? Geoff Canyon: My wife is not a lawyer, but she's worked as a paralegal (although not in Intellectual Property law). Alain: Good initiative, Geoff. Thank your wife for us. Geoff Canyon: She thinks you don't need to do anything special to collectively own the copyright, and cites authors collaborating on a book as an example--they don't have to form a corporation in order to share the copyright on the resulting work. Alain: Good example. Seems like a reasonable inference. Geoff Canyon: Just state the copyright as, "This work copyright 1999 by Joe, Mary, Bob, etc." Alain: We have a problem here though. It will be difficult to attribute a precise author for work done collectively. Who gets mentionned? In what order? If a hundred people participated, do they all get cited? If, instead, we decide to declare that OODL is the Copyright Holder, nothing is solved either because the membership of the OODL is in perpetual motion. Geoff Canyon: Still check with a lawyer--my wife's smart, but she's not legally allowed to offer this as bona fide legal advice. Alain: A cautious disclaimer ... smart thinking! _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
