On 06/06/07, Buesching, Logan J <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I thought all the docs we have and create were under an open license?
Yes, the Open Publication License: http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/ Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and my following opinion mostly follows north american copyright practice... But licenses merely grant redistribution / modification rights. Unless you explicitly transfer copyright, copyright stays with the original author(s). Significant modifications to material that have been licensed for such purposes mean that you get aggregate copyright (which is why you can see multiple copyright statements for a single work). IBM donated the PDO driver HOWTO document to the PHP community for their benefit. If the community chooses not to publish it as a part of the PHP Manual because they don't want to follow standard copyright practice for a significant chunk of documentation, that's the community's choice to make. I think it would be the wrong choice, but I'm just one voice in the community. Alternatives would include posting the PDO Driver HOWTO as a separate, standalone piece of documentation (perhaps similar to the PHP Doc HOWTO, with its own set of copyright statements) or not publishing it at all - which would be a real shame. As an addendum, I would strongly suggest instituting a clear process for doc contributions that includes which license your contribution is being made under and (if you so desire) a copyright transfer to the PHP project. Personally, I think a requirement for copyright transfer would be draconian and I would probably not contribute to a project that imposes that requirement -- but given the low level of contributions that I've made to the PHP docs in the past year, you can probably live without that :) -- Dan Scott Laurentian University
