Hey, people. Interesting how in the entire history of the mailing list,
this hasn't been brought up (with a (sensible) reply). Well, better late
than never. Although I have to disclose that neither am I a lawyer or
someone who has been involved with OpenBSD in any capacity. I am just
stating my opinion for sake of.
I have failed to find a license header on lyrics.html, pages about the FTP
shares or anywhere else that would imply the release songs are covered
under the license. This is equivalent to an all rights reserved, but may
lead people to believe it's BSD 2/3 clause given it's "included with the
OS" (not really), regardless of intention. While it's unlikely somebody
will be exercising copyright over them, it limits usage across corporate
contexts and may lead to people breaking terms of their hosting providers
and such unknowingly.
Possible solutions:
- Explicitly add "all rights reserved" to lyrics.html (may upset someone)
- Add a README file to /songs on FTP and a notice on lyrics.html stating
the songs are part of BSD 2 clause licensed software
- Add a LICENSE file to /songs on FTP and a notice on lyrics.html
- Add licenses where applicable to individuals songs
Now, if none of the artists of a specific song had their rights
transferred or waived (even informally), this would need the headache of
asking one of them to say "I hereby release...". And to know to do that in
the first place involves cross referencing emails.
Also, the BSD 2 clause license is a software license. It is perfectly fit
to distribute assets as part of software, but if it's stated a song on
it's own is "under BSD 2 clause", it won't be clear if a .ogg counts as
"binary form". "Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
copyright notice" how? Add a robotic voice to the end of each song? The
CC-BY licenses would be incompatible with BSD due to attribution to
authors (despite lots of jurisdictions requiring such attribution
regardless due to unwaivable moral rights).
Best license I can think of is the EXPAT/"MIT" but s/software/work/:
---
Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of this work and associated documentation files (the "Work"), to deal
in the work without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the work, and to permit persons to whom the work is furnished to
do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the work.
THE WORK 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. IN NO EVENT SHALL
THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE WORK OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS
IN THE WORK.
---
Although the obvious problem with that is that the whole thing must now be
included under funny internet videos and whatnot, since it's new and
doesn't have a name most would recognize or look up online (like "EXPAT").
So maybe even public domain equivalent at this point..? If anyone has
better suggestions, let me know.
Although what should be considered is what the artists themselves want.
Maybe they want "all rights reserved, enforced only case by case"? We
don't know. Maybe best to ask...
This very email is hereby released under that license. That's it for my
workarounds of capitalism.
