On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Daniel Brown <danbr...@php.net> wrote: > I'm of the opinion that we should license all > machine-interpretable examples (i.e. - "code snippets") in both the > official documentation usage examples and user-submitted examples > alike - including those from the mailing lists and archives - under > either the MIT or New BSD license, so it was good to see someone else > mention those two explicitly. A simple ratification to the license > information pages would suffice. Exempli gratia: > > "The PHP manual text and user-submitted comments are released > under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, Copyright (C) the > PHP Documentation Group, with the exception of machine code regions > (AKA - "code snippets") in the documentation or freely submitted by > the public, which is licensed under [MIT/NBSD]."
As suggested in the DFSG FAQ, I think that a dual-licensing scheme would provide the most clarity and flexibility for the code embedded in the documentation. (I'd also suggest putting the copyright notice before the license name, otherwise it's unclear whether it is the manual or the CC license that is copyright by the PHP Doc Group!) To riff off of your example: "The PHP manual is Copyright (C) the PHP Documentation Group, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. The machine code regions (AKA - "code snippets") in the documentation or freely submitted by the public, are also licensed under the [MIT/NBSD]." I'm sure that there's a good way to tighten up the language about the "example code"/"code snippets" a bit. I'm sure we could find a lawyer or two to review the text, if it would be helpful. > That said, in all technicality, anything presently in existence on > the site is licensed under the CC-BY license, plain and simple. It > would not be difficult to prove it in court, as there are literally > thousands of third-party points of reference as to what code was > present during the Attribution licensing. It's not an interpretable, > subjective case - it's black-and-white reality. Exhibit A existed at > Date-And-Time B, whereby it was legally restricted under License C. Right, that's the starting point. I assume that the PHP Doc Group has copyright to all of the non-user-submitted code examples, so changing those over would just involve a (hopefully not too arduous) internal process. As for user-submitted code, I assume that the submission form does (or could easily) include a note about licensing or assigning copyright. If the Doc Group already has a sufficiently broad license to the existing content, as has been suggested in other emails, then relicensing these components should be pretty straightforward. > One argument could exist, though, in the case that a user submits > a code snippet also licensed under the CC-BY license. This could > create a legal paradox This is a good reason to put a clearly-worded notice on the submission page. Here's the text that Wikipedia puts on their edit pages: "Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted...You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license. See the Terms of Use for details." Basically you have to trust your contributors to actually hold copyright to their submissions, or to have knowledge that they are under a sufficiently permissive license (i.e. one that's CC-BY and NBSD/MIT -compatible) > It is for this reason I remove any > and all notes mentioning licensure in any form. Further, because all > Copyright is transferred by agreement from the submitter - of his/her > own free accord - during the submission process, any claims to > Copyright of any submission or portion thereof is also removed > immediately upon discovery. Based on this it looks like the PHP Doc group holds the copyright to all of the material, so there's no barrier on that front to dual-licensing. --R
