[OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] Updating Attributions

[Jason Etheridge]

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 2:14 PM, Lori Bowen Ayre <lori.ayre at galecia.com> wrote:
> If the source material is licensed, then isn't it more a matter of courtesy
> than licensing to give them credit?

Not if the license explicitly asks for attribution, which is the case here.

>  I think giving credit where credit is due but it also doesn't seem
> reasonable to spend a bunch of DIG time finding the source of material that
> was never licensed in any way.  Of course determining it was NOT licensed is
> an effort in and of itself.

To be clear, if material isn't licensed and isn't in the public domain
(U.S. point of view here), then copyright says we're not allowed to
use it to make derivative copies the way we've been doing.  It's the
license that eases some of the restrictions which copyright gives by
default.

For example, there's a document on the wiki titled "Basic Reporting
Guide - PINES Edition".  There's no copyright statement, but there
doesn't need to be, whoever wrote it still has copyright in it.
There's no explicit license, and therefore we can't copy from it
without contacting the copyright holders and asking for license to do
so.  At best there may be an implied license for use by virtue of
being shared on the wiki, but certainly nothing about redistribution,
or worse, re-licensing the material.

The wiki now has language that implies that folks contributing
material to it are agreeing to license that material under
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, but that can't
retroactively apply to everything already there.

So we may be in some trouble from a legal standpoint, if we've lifted
any of that material.

However, it's fine to "learn" from any source, regardless of the
license, and then write new material based on what you've learned.

-- 
Jason Etheridge
 | VP, Tactical Development
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com