Re: [License-discuss] relationship between opensource code and the copyrighted works it produces?
forget color scripsit: > However, in each case the code I used to write it could be used in > other's projects, whether by concept or direct adaptation. But only > as long as their new works don't infringe my copyrighted works. If you want people to be able to use your code, you can license it under an open-source license. The works of art that you generate by using your code are under a separate copyright. Licensing your code for reuse and change does not mean that your artworks are licensed, so infringement would be judged by the usual standards for visual works. Now if running the code produces the artwork *automatically* without further interaction (as in demo code), that's another story, and you probably need a lawyer for that one. > Any suggestions for licenses to look at are appreciated. The only > thing I found that might be close for my Widget99 example is something > like the Open Art license (http://three.org/openart/license/), but it > doesn't appear to be supported by FSF or OSI. The "noncommercial" and "registration" clauses make that license neither free nor open source. -- John Cowan [email protected]://ccil.org/~cowan No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. --John Donne ___ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] relationship between opensource code and the copyrighted works it produces?
On 09/05/2012 08:19 AM, Karl Fogel wrote: My understanding (I am not a lawyer) is that copyright only applies to creative works -- specifically, to works resulting from human creativity, or to the portion of a work that results from human creativity. This is why, for example, the information in a phone book cannot be copyrighted, but a song reciting those numbers could be. Or indeed, a work containing a creative form of organizing or presenting the phone numbers could be copyrighted, while the data could be /extracted from it/ and would not be covered by copyright. There is one thing to watch out for: do your tools embed the copyrighted work of others in your work? It used to be that Inkscape /did, /and the same has been true for other tools.//In the case of Inkscape, it placed a raster texture called "Sand" in SVG works, and that texture was under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 . Wikipedians were uploading SVG images to Wikipedia and dedicating them to the public domain, but they had this embedded texture that was /not /public domain. I think that Inkscape has since been cleaned up. You can see the Wikimedia Commons discussion at http://wikimedia.7.n6.nabble.com/Licensing-for-textures-within-SVG-files-td1473913.html Thanks Bruce <> smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature ___ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] relationship between opensource code and the copyrighted works it produces?
forget color writes: >I'm a visual artist and composer. Code is my medium. I'm interested in >releasing some of my code as open source, but don't quite understand >the licensing and copyright relationships between an open source >codebase and the artworks that the code may produce. > >There are two types of situations common in my work, and they may >require different treatments. First are works where I don't really >intend anyone else to work on the project with me, but want to make >the code available for learning, understanding, and potential >adaptation into a new (but different) project. Second are works where >I want collaboration on the coding, but generally only to help improve >the work I made with it. > >Therefore, in both cases my intention is to maintain copyright on the >artworks I create using the code. > >For example, if the code produces a browser addon called Widget99 then >I want Widget99 to be a distinct copyrighted work of mine that nobody >else reproduces and pitches as their own. If I make a code-drawing >system and called it CDS then I want CDS and the works I produce with >it to be copyrighted as well. > >However, in each case the code I used to write it could be used in >other's projects, whether by concept or direct adaptation. But only >as long as their new works don't infringe my copyrighted works. > >Is what I want something that can be (or should be) supported by an >open source license, or is what I want inherently non open source? How >is a copyrighted work produced by code affected by that code's open >source availability? > >Any suggestions for licenses to look at are appreciated. The only >thing I found that might be close for my Widget99 example is something >like the Open Art license (http://three.org/openart/license/), but it >doesn't appear to be supported by FSF or OSI. I can imagine GPL or >similar could be used for my CDS example, but only if the copyrighted >works are still protected despite the open source nature of the code. My understanding (I am not a lawyer) is that copyright only applies to creative works -- specifically, to works resulting from human creativity, or to the portion of a work that results from human creativity. This is why, for example, the information in a phone book cannot be copyrighted, but a song reciting those numbers could be. Or why when an editor does a new edition of a public domain work (say, a Beethoven piano sonata), the edition is copyrightable even though the underlying work of Beethoven is still public domain. So I don't think you need to do anything special here. The resultant works are copyrightable (under any terms you choose) to the degree that they result from your creativity. If they are completely automatically generated by open source code, I'm not sure they'd be copyrightable, but I'm also not sure that fact would have anything to do with the license of the code that generated the works. -Karl ___ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
