Louis Suarez-Potts wrote:
Hi Louis,
My aim was not to insult you or attempt to cleave a rift in the
community as a whole, but it is a common, and rather annoying tendency,
in free software projects, to consider that copyrights can just be
considered as equivalent to a piece of paper that one may dispose of
wherever one wishes. This is inherent in the anglo-saxon culture of
copyright, which literally is considered an object of property, and
particularly in North America. One only has to look at common copyright
licences or assignment agreements by US based software companies to
understand that. The JCA is one such example, but the agreement that the
FSF asks coders to sign and assign their rights to them isn't (or
wasn't, I haven't seen it lately) much better, to be honest.
I am British, although I live and work in France, as an Intellectual
Property lawyer. Now, whilst I would fully admit that France is the
copyright kingdom of the world, perhaps excessively so, there remains
deeply ingrained in authors' works a profound sense of moral rights that
can not be whisked away at the touch of a pen on a contract. This has
again recently been restated very clearly in a decision by the Supreme
Court in France. Similar provisions exist in other civil (Roman or
codified) law based European nations, and their inevitable non-European
and former colonial offspring.
The problem with documentation is a thorny one, as we have already seen
in the past. The absence of a clear policy from the start has lead to
branching of the documentation project, and the creation of other
communities of authors who were dissatisfied with the situation as it
stood. The lack of stance and a clear, common policy by the OOo
Community was telling in this regard. Things have got better, but to be
honest, there is still no clear policy statement, at least not to my
knowledge, or unless I am very much mistaken, which I could be, since I
don't intimately follow the politics of the OOo Community.
It would be interesting to know whether such a topic has ever been
seriously discussed at the CC, for example, or whether public
consultation has been requested. Certainly, I have never seen any, and
am present on many of the mailing lists, albeit no longer on the English
users list (too high volume).
In a previous discussion with André, I considered setting up a Legal
project within the Community, in order to be able to discuss this kind
of thing as a forum for debating and obtaining agreement as to policy
statements that could be made by the Community and appear on the site.
This wouldn't IMHO be the sole remit of such a project, but it would of
course require expertise from my peers in the various participating
countries, assuming we actually have any (which I don't know at this
present time). At the moment, I don't have the time to commit to such a
project, at least not on my own, and it would inevitably mean my giving
up participation in some of the others, qa testing for example, or FR
documentation, but I am still giving it some serious thought, because a
project of this size needs a legal conscience of some kind, and as yet
it has none, save that offered by its major sponsor, Sun, to which we,
unfortunately, in the Community are not privy.
Alex
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
