This topic has been dragging on for a while now but I'm bringing it up
again now in the hope that we can move forward with it...
There was general acceptance with the earlier suggestion earlier that
three types of license should be available for music on Mutopia:
1. Public Domain
2. BSD Style
3. Copyleft
I also think most people were of the opinion that no suitable Copyleft
licenses for use with music currently exist (although the CPDL comes
close, http://www.cpdl.org/, IIRC). If anyone wants to have a go at
drafting one, you'd be very much appreciated. :-)
My main interest at the moment is the possibility of allowing some
music on the archive to be placed under a BSD style license. This would
only apply to new editions, arrangements or compositions - music that
is entirely in the public domain will continue as it is at the moment.
I think it would be easiest if only one BSD license is in use on
Mutopia, otherwise people downloading the music could get easily
confused.
A draft license was proposed in March which went something like this:
Copyright (c) 2000 By <name>
All rights reserved.
Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without
license or royalty fees, to use, copy, modify, distribute, perform and
record this music and to distribute, perform and record modified
versions of this music for any purpose, provided that the above
copyright notice, this paragraph and the following disclaimer appear
with all copies of this music, whatever the format of the copy,
printed, audio or otherwise.
THIS MUSIC IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
Does anyone have any more suggestions for improving this?
It obviously won't fit in the tagline of the music so a sentence such
as the following will need to be used in the tagline:
This music is released under the MutopiaBSD license [better name
needed!]. You should have received a copy with this music. If not, it
is available for download at http://sca.uwaterloo.ca/Mutopia/.
Suggestions?
The way I am intending to implement more licenses in Mutopia is by
firstly rewriting the legal page (this is long overdue) - probably
dividing it into two sections, one intended for people who are just
downloading music and the other for people actually submitting music.
There would be descriptions of each available license on this page, and
clicking on on the license section of the music table (the bit that is
always "Public Domain" at the moment) would take you directly to the
appropriate part of this page.
Does this seem sensible?
Chris
--
Chris Sawer - Mutopia Maintainer - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
