On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Brandon Savage <bran...@brandonsavage.net> wrote: > > The CC-BY license states [...some things...] > ... > This is the provision from which I derived that fair use avoids infringement > even if credit is not given.
(IANAL) but it's entirely possible that a Fair Use defense would be successful against claims of copyright infringement... > > That being said, if it is the opinion of the group that the CC-BY combined > with the provisions of fair use do not protect someone who uses the > snippets, then they simply need to give credit. ...that being said, I'm not sure that even the group's opinion is strong enough to provide sufficient legal protection for "snippets," (and how long is a snippet, anyhow?). What I mean is, even if The PHP Documentation Group makes a formal statement that in their opinion the CC-BY license on the manual allows people to make use of example code as long as they just provide attribution, that formal statement might not hold up in court. > FWIW I don't see a significant problem here with giving credit. A line in a > README file that says "Some snippets adapted from documentation provided by > The PHP Documentation Group" would solve the issue entirely. The specific > names of the individuals that constitute the PHP Documentation Group are > irrelevant; the license says "The PHP Documentation Group" is who owns the > copyright, so that's who gets the credit. That level of attribution sounds compatible with just about every license out there. If The PHP Doc Group believes that the CC-BY provides a framework under which a simple attribution line like that is sufficient, then I suggest they grease the wheels and calm the lawyers by clarifying it with an explicit, very permissive license like the New BSD or MIT. > I still don't see a significant issue or a reason to change our licensing. > Furthermore, I don't see why we should change our license to help out the > GPL folks, especially when they've shown considerable disregard for the > rights of others in the software community, most recently in the fight over > Wordpress themes. So PHP should help out the GPL community, but the GPL > community screws the PHP community? I think not. I think that the "PHP community" and "GPL community" share a number of important goals, such as the promotion of FOSS, the empowerment of users with powerful tools that they can modify and run themselves, and a drive to write the best software available. If one of the primary goals of the PHP community is to promote the use of PHP, then I would suggest that the leaders make it as easy as possible for people to start programming in the language, even if means giving people the flexibility to write new code and re-use example code under the GPL or a proprietary license. --R
