Re: [License-discuss] Is it possible to use code or knowledge from Manuals/Wiki/Blog/Resonal pages?

[Bruce Perens]

For my legal protection, don't treat this information as if it came from an attorney 'cause I'm not one. There are various free attorneys who help Open Source projects, you can ask them if necessary.

On 07/10/2012 06:30 AM, Oleksandr Gavenko wrote:

Is it possible use knowledge I get form these sources? In case of patent I 
think no...

Copyright would allow you to do so. The generally-used strategy regarding patents for an Open Source project is to proceed on the assumption that there isn't one until you are informed otherwise, and then ask legal counsel for advice. If you are some deep-pockets company, the strategy is different but you would also have your own attorneys to advise you.

And it also depends upon the purpose. Publishing information about a patented process doesn't infringe, using the process potentially does.

I don't understand this. For example I use copyleft licence for my program and
Wikipedia use copyleft (share alike) license for its content. I got conflict?

Which copyleft license? There can be copyleft licenses that are not compatible with each other in the specific terms of the license. Even GPL2 vs. GPL3. Are all of the pieces clearly under the same license or compatible licenses? Sometimes it is a lot of work to figure that out. And be sure to attribute the pieces correctly, and provide information about their licensing.

Wikipedia free for knowledge but non-free for use it in free software with 
different statements for freedom?

Generally what you find in Wikipedia is an explanation of an algorithm. This algorithm isn't copyrightable, but the specific way it is written can have copyrightable parts. So, the easy way to deal with this is to look at how it works and write your own version. The more complicated way would be to develop an understanding of the functional vs. expressive dichotomy in copyright law, in which case you would start by reading the decision in CAI vs. Altai.

================================================================

Interesting also case of non-free references and standards. They define a
coupe of constants, without which you can't develop certain types of protocol.
You need to copy a large part of constants and adapt many symbolic names for
these constants...

Is that valid?

We just had a re-iteration of the functional vs. expressive debate in the Oracle v. Google case regarding Java. It made it even more clear that the functional part of the Java specification was not copyrightable. You get to use the constants, function names, etc. The problem would not be copyright, but patents.

    Thanks

    Bruce

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