On Wed, 7 Apr 2010, Karsten Wade wrote: > On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 05:33:02PM -0400, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote: > >> 1. Individual chapters are owned by their respective authors. > > In the case of people working for Red Hat who were doing this work as > part of their @redhat.com jobs, it may actually be Red Hat who is the > copyright holder. That's largely how I recall seeing it practiced. > Red Hat's lawyers will certainly have an opinion. Mine? I don't > care, since it is appropriately licensed to be freed forever.
I think this is likely to be true for Redhatters. We may assign copyright dually to Red Hat and the author or something. I'll look into it. >> 2. The collective textbook -- most importantly, the title and its >> trademark, and the right to decide what gets published under that mark -- >> are owned by an entity that can protect and sustain that brand. I propose >> that this will be Red Hat, since Red Hat paid for the time of the majority >> of the authors to write the first version of the textbook. > > This is really a larger discussion about the Teaching Open Source > mark, right? Related, but not the same. They are two separate marks. > I'm happy to have Red Hat do that job, they are pretty good at it, in > my experience. > >> 3. Because all of the chapters are individual works, they could all be >> taken and remixed into another textbook without any permission. Which >> means that anybody would have the full right to fork the text -- i.e. >> create a new text called "Fidelio College's Open Source Textbook", so long >> as the original authors receive the appropriate attribution in the new >> textbook. > > I think I see the distinction. Being largely individual works, > remixing and attributing is easier than if the work were all mixed up. > Theoretically, anyway, since some of us wrote bits all over that might > be copyrightable. In practice, it is probably easier for a remixer to > just attribute all copyright holders, but one could e.g. remix the > book without the "Fixing the Code" chapter and drop Jeff Sheltren from > the attribution downstream. Not sure if this point matters? > >> 4. How we work "Teaching Open Source" as an organization into the >> "ownership" of the text is a difficult problem, because TOS is not a >> formalized legal organization, but a group of folks working together. >> For that reason, I don't think it makes sense to have TOS as a copyright >> holder, but it is important to give this group some recognition. Is >> hosting the textbook at TOS sufficient for that purpose? > > Another note, Red Hat has used a consistent bit of text that I think > folks have largely been happy with: "Copyright (c) YYYY Red Hat, > inc. and others." The "and others" covers all other copyright > contributions, and source control identifies who did what. > > As part of putting it's name on the work and stewarding the mark, Red > Hat is taking on some responsibility to respond to threats against the > copyright or the mark. At the same time, it is appropriate to note > that others have copyright, which you can discern at the worst by > turning to Red Hat for details. (Something like that.) Hm, yes, useful. Thanks for this. >> Red Hat paid for a large chunk of the writing of this book, so this is our >> attempt to ensure that we receive some brand recognition for it, while >> still ensuring the freedom to fork that is required to make for a truly >> open project. >> >> Does anyone -- most specifically, authors -- disagree with this position? >> Because I'm going to be talking to Red Hat lawyers in the not-too-distant >> future, and I want to make sure that we have consensus. And if we don't >> have consensus, I want to work through it before I commit to sitting down >> in front of lawyers, who don't like wasting time on people who don't have >> their stuff together. :) > > I think that's fair, as an author, but I'm also clearly biased. > Regardless, I think the license provides the sufficient freedoms. Thanks for the input. :) --g -- Educational materials should be high-quality, collaborative, and free. Visit http://opensource.com/education and join the conversation. _______________________________________________ tos mailing list [email protected] http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
