Re: [Haifux] License of Haifux lectures
Shachar Shemesh wrote: I'll have to think about that one. My Wine lectures already carry a license which is rather simplistic, but should answer whatever is needed. As for the security lectures - I'll have to look into those. If anyone needs to do anything specific with them, they are welcome to contact me. OK, let's realize one simple thing. If someone wants to take something from these lectures, they will. If they want to give credits, they will. If they don't want to, they wont. Licenses, especially when it comes to slides, are such nonsense. The Bulgarian case is a beautiful demonstration: Here come a few guys from Bulgaria, who want to translate our slides. In a friendly (should I dare to use the word free?) world, we would simply say: Of course, go ahead, we're glad we could help you, but instead we say something like we're going to call our lawyer. The only reason we don't call him, is that we don't have one. Eventually, they will accept our conditions, or they won't. If they accepted our conditions, it's most probably because they were OK with them in the first place. If they won't, we have saved our slides from the terribly faith of millions of Bulgarians being unaware that Eli Billauer wrote the lecture about IP maquerading. And there is the third possibility: That they get sick and tired of licenses, and write it all by themselves. Which happens all too often. Will they give us credits? Of course they will! It's for their own benefit to show what the original was, so people can correct their translation if it turns out to be wrong. Unlike software, slides consist of little text, and a few figures, and neither have to be tested. If I just want to make a lecture in the Estonian Linux Club, based upon Shahar's slides, and not waste too much time, I will simply use his slides, and hence the credits will be there. If I work for a corporate, I will rewrite the slides, possibly copying the figures with another graphics tools. Can you prove I copied from you after that? And as far as I know, it even copyrightly legal (which is not the point here anyhow). I hate licenses, because they take a community that should deal with helping and sharing, and feeds it with loads of paranoia. We're protecting ourselves against an enemy that is either nonexistent, or strong enough to do whatever he wants. Eli -- Web: http://www.billauer.co.il -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] License of Haifux lectures
On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, Ron Artstein wrote: On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Maor Meir wrote: an ideal license as far as I am concerned would allow others to use my work convinient while making sure I get appropreate credit for my work but not allow anyone to attach my name to any junk some how related to something I wrote. Wouldn't putting your work in the public domain achieve just that? I'm no legal expert, but my understanding is that for works in the public domain, people are still under the obligation to give credit where appropriate, or at least not claim credit for themselves when inappropriate. Please correct me if I'm wrong. You're wrong. Public domain texts need not be attibuted when quoted or even used in entrity. Consider the Bible, the US Constitution, or works of Shakesphere. You may quote a significat portion (or all) of these texts without attributing the original author. You may not, however, claim you wrote these texts, due to the simple fact that you didn't. Alon -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 GPG public key at http://alon.wox.org/pubkey.txt Key fingerprint = A670 6C81 19D3 3773 3627 DE14 B44A 50A3 FE06 7F24 -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- ... the MYSTERIANS are in here with my CORDUROY SOAP DISH!! -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] License of Haifux lectures
On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, Eli Billauer wrote: OK, let's realize one simple thing. If someone wants to take something from these lectures, they will. If they want to give credits, they will. If they don't want to, they wont. And if they don't have a license, they will be breaking the law. Licenses, especially when it comes to slides, are such nonsense. The Bulgarian case is a beautiful demonstration: Here come a few guys from Bulgaria, who want to translate our slides. In a friendly (should I dare to use the word free?) world, we would simply say: Of course, go ahead, we're glad we could help you, but instead we say something like we're going to call our lawyer. The only reason we don't call him, is that we don't have one. If YOU wrote the slides, and the slides are your own work, the go ahead response is reasonable. But suppose now you're hosting someone else's work. You have no authority to tell them to use the slides. Furthermore, if you do tell them to use the slides, and the original author (or the company he works for) gets mad, they can sue YOU for allowing someone else to use something you didn't write. Eventually, they will accept our conditions, or they won't. If they accepted our conditions, it's most probably because they were OK with them in the first place. And that's exactly why we want the licenses to say that explictly, so that the one lecture written on company time and based on sources which do not want to be widely redistributed will not lead to people suing Haifux. The licensing should have been done in the first place before publishing the slides. But, as there is no license, we must ask for one explictly now. And there is the third possibility: That they get sick and tired of licenses, and write it all by themselves. Which happens all too often. Licensing can be as trivial as saying do anything you want with my lectures. I don't see the problem. Unlike software, slides consist of little text, and a few figures, and neither have to be tested. If I just want to make a lecture in the Estonian Linux Club, based upon Shahar's slides, and not waste too much time, I will simply use his slides, and hence the credits will be there. If I work for a corporate, I will rewrite the slides, possibly copying the figures with another graphics tools. Can you prove I copied from you after that? And as far as I know, it even copyrightly legal (which is not the point here anyhow). Using Shachar's slides in an Estonian Linux Club may well be illegal under copyright law, as you are not allowed to make copies without explicit permission from the author. I hate licenses, because they take a community that should deal with helping and sharing, and feeds it with loads of paranoia. We're protecting ourselves against an enemy that is either nonexistent, or strong enough to do whatever he wants. In a perfect world, there would be no copyright law (or a much more lenient one) that will make everything free unless explictly restiricted. In that world, we wouldn't have to bother with licenses to make our stuff free. Regratably, this is not the case, and the default is all rights reserved. Alon -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 GPG public key at http://alon.wox.org/pubkey.txt Key fingerprint = A670 6C81 19D3 3773 3627 DE14 B44A 50A3 FE06 7F24 -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- Die, v.: To stop sinning suddenly. -- Elbert Hubbard -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] License of Haifux lectures
Alon Altman wrote: And that's exactly why we want the licenses to say that explictly, so that the one lecture written on company time and based on sources which do not want to be widely redistributed will not lead to people suing Haifux. The licensing should have been done in the first place before publishing the slides. But, as there is no license, we must ask for one explictly now. Alon -- you seem to have misunderstood me (or was it me not making myself clear?). I had no criticism whatsoever on the fact that you were making a round of requests for permissions to use the slides. We have been very sloppy with this issue, maybe because none of us bothered to think in that direction. And it is, of course, everyone's legal right to release his or her work under any possible licence. Neither do I think that Haifux should force anyone to adopt any certain license (who is Haifux?). I was only surprised to realize, that people that are so aware of the mess that the licenses make in our world, make an issue of what license they are going to give to their lectures -- a license that is so easily bypassed anyhow (by an inspired rewrite). Eli -- Web: http://www.billauer.co.il -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] License of Haifux lectures
Alon Altman wrote: You may not, however, claim you wrote these texts, due to the simple fact that you didn't. Even that is not 100% correct. I guess false advertising and libel laws may apply, but consider the following case: I take the classic BSD TCP/IP stack (public domain). I put in lots and lots of modifications. I add PMTU discovery, SYN cookies, and lots and lots of other stuff. While I added a lot, there is no doubt that this is still deriviative work. However, as the original was not copyrighted, that's not an issue. However, I now call it the Shachar's Enterprise TCP/IP stack. I'm not breaking any laws, despite the fact that you may understand from that that I wrote all of it. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Systems Consulting http://www.lingnu.com/ -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] License of Haifux lectures
On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, Yoni Rabkin Katzenell wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong here. I'm going out on a limb and saying what is on my mind. No need to get offended, I'm just another non-lawyer playing the this is legal and that is not game with you all. Let us say that I have a work that is publicly displayed with no license. I find out that someone has copied my work. Can I now call that person up and tell him/her that I had a license all along but kept it Hidden and now I want that person to abide by that license or be sued? I don't know that answer to the above, it is really a question, not a sarcastic remark. I think that anyone who has put work on the net with no license text what so ever has lost that work because that person has shown that he/she has no interest to *diligently* and *aggressively* protect that work. Beyond that, who is willing to say that they *really* understand the license that they use for text (not code) or have had a lawyer look at it and explain it to them. Guessing will get you killed in court. Let me continue to say that if a Bulgarian copies a lecture that had no license displayed in any way. The only way that individual can get sued is if the copyright holder (that just woke up all of the sudden and decided to be a copyright holder) sues the Bulgarian. So what follows is, if no-one is prepared to sue them, why the trouble? If you put a license on your work then you need to be prepared to defend it. Anyone thinking of taking a Bulgarian to court over a lecture slide? If not, then you lose the copyright anyway because you fail to defend it *aggressively*. Lastly: In my opinion the lectures are already copied and copied again. This is a good thing. Remember stories of hackers just passing someone's screen and thinking that's cool, I'll use that. Now we license first and share later. Why are you collecting Haifux Intellectual Property, will Haifux really sue? All that said. Deep breath, relaxation. I'm deeply interested in the way people see these issues but I realise I go about it a bit heavy handed. A plain Haifux license that everyone understands and that has been approved by a real lawyer should reside over *all* works and one (and only one) person or body should enforce it. Otherwise you will have a group people that are all not lawyers, all guessing and arguing about license this and license that while the Bulgarians have Save As...ed all of Haifux long ago. As far as I understand this, no license means all right reserved. We are not trying to enforce any rights here, but rather the opposite. We are explicitely releasing some of the rights over the slides. Most amusingly, those who care about free software usually care about not stealing. This is why we were asked for the slides in the first place - because they care about our rights. Since we are not trying to posses rights, but rather to give them, and since people vary in what exactly it is that they want to keep to themselves (their name? using the material in a non-commercial way? public domain?), I do not see a point in having to agree on a haifux license, just because the lecture was given in Taub. What would you do with guests? And Telux members? Another point is that the IP can only be given to a legal entity - namely Hamakor and not haifux. Not all haifux members wish that. A part of the freedom of the software, in my opinion, if the right to decide on the license that the things I write will carry. And there is no need to bother with the legal stuff - stating what you want is simple enough, using Creative Commons licenses, for example. Like I don't see anybody bothering with the GPL - It is legally sound, and all we programmers need to say is just that the software is GPL-ed. Orna. -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] License of Haifux lectures
On Sat, 28 Feb 2004, Orna Agmon wrote: Thanks to Alon altman, I went to http://creativecommons.org/license/ and created licenses according to people's requests. The lectures by the people who already replied carry links to the appropriate licenses. As you can see there, they give the following options: ...snip... I can suggest that unless you find a license that says that, we build for you the require attribution+do not allow modification, and add that if somebody modified it alot, they need not attribute it to you. this will have to be good enough. meir -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] License of Haifux lectures
Orr Dunkelman wrote: Well, such a license would not be free. I do not recall, however, that releasing the lecture slides under a free license was a prerequisit to giving a Haifux lecture. Shachar Well, it is not, you can keep whatever rights you want. We don't force no one to sign them oiver (like the video -- if you want - sign the rights to hamakor). However, this is a problem, when we are asked whether those slides can be copied, translated, etc. I'll have to think about that one. My Wine lectures already carry a license which is rather simplistic, but should answer whatever is needed. As for the security lectures - I'll have to look into those. If anyone needs to do anything specific with them, they are welcome to contact me. As for the videos - can I start off by purchasing a copy myself? Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Systems Consulting http://www.lingnu.com/ -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] License of Haifux lectures
On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 02:49:14PM +0200, Shachar Shemesh wrote: Well, such a license would not be free. I do not recall, however, that releasing the lecture slides under a free license was a prerequisit to giving a Haifux lecture. One practical test applies here: Can I use code snippents from the lecture slides/notes in my free program? And specifically: can I use them in a GPL-ed program? The GFDL has such an issue. -- Tzafrir Cohen +---+ http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir/ |vim is a mutt's best friend| mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] +---+ -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] License of Haifux lectures
On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Maor Meir wrote: Can anyone give here or point me to a short review of free licenses when talking about lecture slides on such like. I am fammilier with what it means to GPL/LGPL/ public domain license software, I am uncertain of how these licenses apply to anything other than software. there is also a GNU documentation licence? what are it's benefits/downsides? an ideal license as far as I am concerned would allow others to use my work convinient while making sure I get appropreate credit for my work but not allow anyone to attach my name to any junk some how related to something I wrote. Does such a magical license exist? what comes close? Meir Thanks to Alon altman, I went to http://creativecommons.org/license/ and created licenses according to people's requests. The lectures by the people who already replied carry links to the appropriate licenses. As you can see there, they give the following options: by: Require attribution? Yes No Allow commercial uses of your work? Yes No Allow modifications of your work? Yes Yes, as long as others share alike No What this form lacks is the granolarity you request (i.e. - if someone changes it alot). I can suggest that unless you find a license that says that, we build for you the require attribution+do not allow modification, and add that if somebody modified it alot, they need not attribute it to you. I doubt that there will be any license saying that only if their work is good (to your taste), they should attribute it :) Orna. -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
