Cameron,
Some comments on your point of view.
On 10/07/11 21:55, Cameron Shorter wrote:
Simon,
It is a delicate balance we have between covering our legal
requirements, and putting so much red tape in place that volunteers
don't contribute. I'd hate to see everyone's gifts of good will be
hindered by red tape.
Future contributions, if given clear guidelines (like you have
suggested) should not have to do any more than they would otherwise.
The issue here is respecting the copyright of already published works.
If someone has taken the time to specify a license they release
documentation under and others disregard this because it is
convenient, it sends the wrong message.
OSGeo is the premier open source GIS group. They should insist on
respecting others copyright and that contributors cite their sources
and ensure they are not in breach of copyright.
Every time I look into this issue I find people totally ignore
copyright. This is a legal requirement not something I have made up!
My previous suggestion was what I consider to be the bare minimum, and I
would consider it acceptable.
Your previous suggestion only required someone to say they were happy
for you to release the various documentation under CC-BY or CC-BY-SA
licence.
I remember when we discussed access to the Victorian Government
datasets you insisted I provide you with official documentation
verifying I was legally allowed to distribute this data. When I asked
you whether you asked all your contributors for such documents you
indicated that it was not common practice. My question is why is it
more important to ensure appropriate documentation is obtained for
government datasets and not others sources of educational material?
I do agree that it would be an added bonus, and preferable, to also
reference source material, and I am happy to encourage people to
reference sources if they can readily identify them. But I don't want to
mandate this as a criteria.
As stated. In order to honestly sign the disclaimer you posted in this
thread, the authors would need to go back and look at the information
used as the source and verify they have permission to extract the
data. otherwise it is merely a means of OSGeo of saying "sorry your
Honor, we were lead to believe that the contributor had checked this."
In the case of Project Overviews, which are brief summaries from
external sources, I expect that the "Fair Use" clause is applicable,
which says that you can use parts of copyright docs as part of a review.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Reproduction of a work, in whole or part, to create a derivative that
consists entirely of this source text or images, is simply piracy or
more colloquially plagiarism. This is clearly stated repeatedly on the
website you refer to above.
Lastly, it is sometimes worth checking the legal consequences of us
getting the licenses wrong. Is someone likely to sue OSGeo-Live for
inappropriately using material put into Project Overviews or
Quickstarts? I think not.
Ah! The nub of the argument...
"What is the chance of someone sueing OSGeo Foundation for breach of
copyright, when people are pilfering from source documents probably
created by the broader OSGeo community anyway".
If I wear my businessman hat, then the answer to this question is
practically none.
BUT
Taking a philosophical stance I would argue that people that create
derivatives are obliged to ensure that all source material is
appropriately licensed for them to use it in the way they intend.
If the license is not, then the copyright owners need to be approached
to ask for permission to use the documentation in the manner proposed.
If the licence is ambiguous , then again the copyright owners need to
be contacted.
The only time that works can be used without going back to the
copyright owner is when that owner has specified the licence under
which derivatives can be created, and your proposed works meet this
criteria.
As shown in my simple audit below. None of the source documents people
on this list stated were used to create the project overviews were
appropriately licensed for text to be extracted and rebadged in a
product like the LiveDVD -- regardless of the value of such a resource.
The issue here is respecting others copyright not whether your project
is of value or not.
Actually, I think it very unlikely that owners
of source material would be offended in the slightest. They'd be more
likely to be offended if their material were not included.
This is debatable. If someone has taken the time to license a work and
the LiveDVD sucks in their work and redistributes it contrary to the
license conditions, why would they be OK with this. Like most things,
they would be pragmatic about the situation and ask for the breach to
be resolved.
But lets say someone is offended,
The legal term is "breach of copyright" or "copyright infringement".
we can simply say "I'm sorry" then rewrite any
offending material, as Overviews and Quickstarts are quite short, and
only a minimal amount to work to recreate. (Or minimal compared to the
time we are spending discussing licenses).
If Overviews are so easy to create. Why didn't contributors just
create new material and then we would not be having this conversation.
I am sorry you consider that this topic is a waste of time but in my
view is that if it is obvious that people are ignoring copyright in
the creation of documentation the lead open source group should
address this not say "oh well, we will address it if someone complains".
Also, I have clearly stated that you need not delay production of your
LiveDVD due to this discussion and that we agree to disagree on this
topic.
I will finish with these statements "(1) addressing copyright is
fundamental to document creation and need not be anymore a hindrance
to the creation of good work than inserting titles at the top of the
page, section headers throughout the text or doing a spell check; and
(2) not addressing copyright is either blatant plagiarism or shear
laziness; regardless it exposes an organisation that condones it to
legal action at one extreme, to being tainted with a bad reputation at
the other".
(c) Simon Cropper, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Australia
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/au/deed.en
On 10/07/11 13:29, Simon Cropper wrote:
Cameron,
I don't think that this is too much to ask since people would need to
gather this information anyway to be able to 'sign' the disclaimer
that you outlined.
All I am asking is that the paper trail is transparent.
On 10/07/11 13:25, Simon Cropper wrote:
Cameron,
Maybe your suggested disclaimer could be augmented to state...
1. The Project Overviews are based on the following material which was
released under the <insert name of license here> license.
- specify source material
2. The <name of license> has been confirmed to be a permissive license
compatible with CC-BY.
- specify license type of source material
- may be multiple if derivative includes material from multiple
sources
3. The link to the source document is here...
- so other can check
4. The link to the deed for the source document is here...
- so license terms can be verified.
- it also allows it to be clear what license or version of license the
documentation was released under. For example MIT has a variety of
varieties, as does Creative Commons. People need to verify and specify
which license was used and point to the deed.
After this *then* you can insert your disclaimer.
On 10/07/11 12:47, Simon Cropper wrote:
Cameron,
Respondents need to do more than *just say they are happy* with
Project
Overviews being CC-BY. They need to *verify that the source material
used in creation of this documentation* allows them to say they
are OK.
My audit below suggests that the bulk of projects checked would
not be
able to do this.
Look at the GDAL discussion over the last few days. They have
clarified
the documentation is X/MIT licensed. This allows you to use the
documentation *but* the LiveDVD needs to include the disclaimer that
forms part of the licence deed at along with the documentation, so
it is
in some ways more like CC-BY-SA, not CC-BY. Looking at the
discussion on
the CC Website they equate the MIT licence to CC-BY-SA-NC.
It is a simplistic view that all that is needed is to have a project
representative say that the documentation is CC-BY without providing
evidence (paper trail) showing that this is the case.
On 10/07/11 06:54, Cameron Shorter wrote:
Regarding results of my polling of projects about license. I sent an
email to this list, then followed up with an email to the nominated
project contacts for each project.
I've had responses from all projects bar GeoMoose (a got one
response
saying they would respond later, but then seems to have forgotten).
Almost all of the responses were along the lines of "Yes, I'm fine
with
CC-By for Overviews and CC-By-SA for Quickstarts".
Simon Cropper who has written an excellent gvsig quickstart has
noted on
this list his preference for CC-By-SA to be used for Overviews.
Simon
also noted that we should collect people's responses publicly in
order
to ensure transparency, which is a good idea, and I'll follow
through
next asking for this confirmation.
One person is still wanting to check the license of his source
material
for Overviews, and investigate some of the legal issues.
But apart from that, everyone else was pro our license selection.
So I'll send a following email asking people to publicly state their
acceptance of the OSGeo-Live license policy on this live email
list, and
also comment on whether there is any source material which cannot be
included in osgeo-live.
On 06/07/11 10:03, Simon Cropper wrote:
On 05/07/11 20:52, Ian Turton wrote:
On 30 June 2011 05:31, Johan Van de
Wauw<[email protected]>
wrote:
On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 2:30 AM, Simon Cropper
<[email protected]> wrote:
Project overviews are so small that even if a restrictive license
would apply, you could still get away with copying it
completely as
sort of citation. We are talking about 2-3 sentences and a
list of
features, which -I guess- in many cases have been at least partly
copied and/or inspired from/by other sources often not noting any
license and therefore copyrighted - so if you are so strict about
licensing I'm not even sure we can publish them ourselves.
This sums up my feelings exactly - if the document we are
concerned
with is commercially confidential there is no way I can see any
has
copied my work so I can't enforce any licence anyway. So I don't
really care, to be honest. The project overviews are so short and
mostly derived from the project web site anyway I don't think it
matters.
I think the CC-BY-SA is right for the quickstarts where I have
actually authored something that took me time and energy but the
overview was mostly copy and paste any way so CC-BY is fine and we
just have to trust people anyway since none of us is going to
go to
law over it if we even found out.
Ian,
Your sentiments summed up the feeling of the broader community and
consequently Cameron has proceeded with his proposal for CC-BY for
Project Overviews and CC-BY-SA for QuickStarts.
Everyone keeps telling me that the Project Overviews are extracted
from the project websites and have little or no creative content.
Granted most are small but how much creative content is required
before you move from CC-BY to CC-BY-SA? To me this is a thorny
question but as demonstrated by the myriad of responses to this
list
and directly to Cameron (who was going to provide an email
outlining
the outcome of his enquires to the project contacts), I am alone at
being concerned about this issue. So I'll leave this issue alone.
Another issue however is the blatant cut-and-paste mentality when
constructing project overviews. This implies that text on the
project
website or associated documentation are appropriately licensed for
this to occur.
*I am arguing that it is not*
I have conducted a brief audit of the OSgeo Projects Websites. I
created the list of projects below from the main page of the OSGeo
Foundation website - http://www.osgeo.org/ so the list is just a
subset of what is on the Live DVD (hopefully an indicative subset).
I have grouped the projects based on the type of copyright...
Group 1. No copyright specified so local laws kick in
Group 2. Ambiguous or variable licensing (see notes), and
Group 3. Full 'all right reserved' copyright specified
My simple audit can be found at the bottom of this email.
Using information from Group 1 or Group 3 websites is not allowed
without approaching the copyright owners and getting permission.
This
permission should be flagged at the start of a Project Overview
with a
disclaimer such as 'Reproduced with permission by Author 2011'.
The copyright for the Group 2 websites is at best ambiguous (see
notes). I am not sure how GNU Affero GPL and GNU Free Documentation
License 2002 relates to CC-BY. This would be a matter for
solicitors I
suppose. Quantum GIS and GeoNetworks however is a little clearer --
documentation from these sites which is released under a CC-BY-SA
license CAN NOT be re-released under a CC-BY license (this is
contrary
to the SA option).
So following my audit it is apparent that none of the source
documents
mentioned as being used to create Project Overviews can be
simply be
cut-and-paste from the project documentation, as everyone is
telling
me happens, without the authors of the derived documents being in
breach of copyright. The only time this would not be the case is
when
the author of the Project Overview is the author of the original
source document. In projects where hundreds are involved in
creation
of documentation this would be highly unlikely.
--- My simple audit ---
Group 1. Websites with no copyright notices (i.e. they do not state
they are in public domain, CC0, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA). In most
jurisdictions, the author is automatically covered by a
'copyright -
all rights reserved' option.
- deegree / homepage and wiki
- MapBuilder
- MapGuide Open Source
- OpenLayers
- gvSIG
- FDO
- GDAL/OGR
- GEOS
- MetaCRS
- PostGIS
Group 2. Ambiguous or variable licensing
- geomajas - GNU Affero GPL is specified at the footer of
the website. It is unclear if this 'software' licence
relates to the software or the text on the page as this
licence is usually applied to the former not the latter.
- Mapblender - Website has no licence specified. The PDF manual is
GNU Free Documentation License 2002.
- GRASS GIS - Home page 'copyright - all rights reserved' license
but wiki GNU Free Documentation License 2002.
- Quantum GIS - Home page 'copyright - all rights reserved' license
but wiki CC-BY-SA.
- GeoNetworks - Home page 'copyright - all rights reserved'
license but
documentation released under CC-BY-SA
Group 3. 'copyright - all rights reserved' license specified
- Geoserver
- Mapfish
- MapServer
- GeoTools
- OSSIM - Home page, PDF documents and Wiki all under 'copyright -
all rights reserved' license
