I think that's reading too much into the Copyright Notice. The notice is not enough to determine what portions are under whose copyright. It is *not* all under Oracle copyright. In fact, I suspect the only part that is will be from Sun and Oracle employees (as work for hire) and perhaps others who signed CLAs (although the terms don't require one for the site, including the wiki).
That formula notice is not enough for Oracle to act as the holder of copyrights that were in no way transferred by the other contributors. (CLAs are not required under the general site terms and definitely not for wiki contributions.) Assuming that the terms can be held to apply to the wiki (there is no notice on the wiki and no click-through with regard to the terms that I've seen), all anyone can do (including you or I) is sublicense and that is not the same thing. It is nice that the terms of use assert a default permissive license, but that is difficult to apply to the wiki also because people are allowed to (1) attach their own copyright notices and, as we have seen, (2) assert less permissive licenses by signing up on that special list. Recall that, in the US and I assume elsewhere, copyright must be explicitly transferred in writing except for the work-for-hire case. In short, the wiki is a mess. IMHO as we like to say. And, IANAL, but I would love to play one on television. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Frank Peters [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 22:01 To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: Wiki for the project - wiki.services.openoffice.org provenance > Agreed where Oracle has the exclusive copyright. My only concern is > that those other-license pages might not be under Oracle copyright > and we will need to find out. As I mentioned in the reply to Thorsten's mail, according to the copyright page, Oracle co-owns the copyright to all wiki content, unless you dispute the validity of that statement as such. > I don't know the state of affairs, and was only raising a caution flag And rightly so. > -- another matter to check into. Frank > - Dennis > > PS: I am working to break myself of the convenient but misleading > term, "relicensing," since only the owner of the copyright can set > license terms and offer multiple (non-exclusive) licenses. There is > no downstream "relicensing." What happens is more nuanced and > relicensing appears not to be an appropriate term. > > -----Original Message----- From: Frank Peters > [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, June 14, > 2011 13:09 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Wiki for the > project - wiki.services.openoffice.org provenance > > >> What caught my eye was the statement that some material was under >> special licensing and you'd have to notice that on an >> individual-page basis. > > That is indeed the case and the licensing situation on the wiki has > traditionally been awkward. But couldn't Oracle remedy this by (as > copyright holder) relicensing the content under AL like done with the > source? > > Frank > >> -----Original Message----- From: Greg Stein >> [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 10:51 To: >> [email protected] Subject: Re: Wiki for the project - >> wiki.services.openoffice.org provenance >> >> On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 13:37, Frank Peters >> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Am 14.06.2011 18:05, schrieb Dennis E. Hamilton: >>>> >>>> There are two pages that caught my attention immediately on >>>> visiting http://wiki.services.openoffice.org. >>>> >>>> There is this one: >>>> <http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Wiki:Copyrights>. >>>> >>>> >>>> > >>>> And that leads to this interesting one: >>>> <http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Authors_licensing_declaration>. >>>> >>>> >>>> > >>>> None of those are what I would call permissive. >>> >>> The question is whether Oracle as copyright holder actually >>> donates the contents of the wiki under ASL (or any document >>> equivalent of it) as well. Same holds for the website content. >> >> There is an ASLv1.0 and ASLv1.1. There is an ALv2. >> >> The "S" was dropped in order to apply it to documentation :-) >> >> If Oracle owns the copyright to any or all of the wiki content, >> then they can place it under our standard Software Grant, and we >> can license as we choose (ALv2 or (say) one of the CC licenses). >> >> Cheers, -g >> >
