[OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen documentation

[Mike Rylander]

On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 5:49 PM, Dan Scott <dan at coffeecode.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 5:15 PM, Mike Rylander <mrylander at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 4:30 PM, Mike Rylander <mrylander at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Dan Scott <dan at coffeecode.net> wrote:
> <snip>
>>>> Hopefully this is just an oversight and the real intention is to
>>>> release the Equinox-derived documentation under the CC-BY-SA license.
>>>
>>> It's not an oversight.
>>>
>>> We can, certainly, grant a differently flavored license to the DIG
>>> (well, the foundation, I guess) specifically, or provide explicit
>>> clarification on points of concern regarding commercial use, if that's
>>> the only way DIG will be able to make use of the documentation we
>>> produce.  But unless a licensing exception is requested (and, really,
>>> all it takes is an email explaining why) we'll be defaulting to the
>>> less BSD-like -NC license.
>>>
>>
>> I feel I should clarify the reasons for this decision.
>>
>> We have, in recent memory, had documentation that we produced and own
>> the copyright on taken directly, rebranded to strip all mention of ESI
>> -- in the content, copyright notices, everything -- and reused without
>> any attribution.  This has happened more than once, and was not
>> addressed even after we specifically requested that the we simply be
>> credited.  Because our request for simple attribution has not been
>> respected, we felt it important to make a clear and strong statement
>> that, while everything we produce will be made available to the Open
>> Source community for use and reuse, we (all, not just ESI) have to put
>> thought explicitly into protecting our rights and being explicit about
>> what we will allow by default.
>
> An alternative course of action would be to file a copyright lawsuit
> for willfully infringing the terms of your company's use of the
> CC-BY-SA license and ignoring your request to come into compliance
> with that license. It sounds like a pretty clear copyright violation
> to me (disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice).
>
> This is analogous to how the Software Freedom Conservancy could file a
> lawsuit on Evergreen's behalf if some entity took Evergreen's GPL
> code, stripped the copyright & license headers, and didn't comply with
> the terms of the GPL.
>
> I, for one, would support your company's defence of its copyright if
> you chose to take the infringing party to court. We choose licenses
> such as the GPL and the CC-BY-SA because we can create a stronger
> product - software and documentation - by working collectively. If
> other entities choose to abuse the terms of the licenses that we have
> chosen, we should encourage them to come into compliance - and if they
> fail to comply, then a lawsuit is a completely reasonable choice of
> action.

I expected nothing else, Dan! :)  I'm quite sure we all agree that OSS
licenses, esp copyleft-ish ones, depend on copyrights.

I still think the default license we publish the documentation under
is beside the point, though.  So, based on concerns raised as to
whether the DIG can incorporate NC content (it seems that's strongly
in doubt?) then I can't see any reason ESI couldn't simply provide a
waiver of the NC portion to DIG (or the foundation, or the SFC, or
whoever should have it) for the purpose of incorporating the asciidoc
into the larger Evergreen documentation repository.  Then, as part of
the whole, it can be reused for commercial purposes, assuming that
that (say, selling an entire Evergreen manual, or the like) is the
point of avoiding the NC variant.

I know that may not be something that one person can necessarily
answer on behalf of the DIG, but are you (all) willing to have the
discussion?

-- 
Mike Rylander
 | Director of Research and Development
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  miker at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com