[OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] PDF icon: licensing concern & fix

[Dan Scott]

Hi all:

I'm kind of regretting bringing this up in the first place, but as I
don't think we have any copyright lawyers on either the communications
team or the oversight board, since I started this discussion, I'll take
point on tracking down an authoritative answer.

For what it's worth, the PDF icon at
http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdeartwork/IconThemes/primary/scalable/mimetypes/application-pdf.svgz?view=log
is also licensed under the LGPL at
http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdeartwork/IconThemes/primary/LICENSE?view=markup

For the short term, in my (I am not a lawyer and this does not
constitute legal advice) opinion, I think it should be fine to include
the KDE icon in question as long as we reproduce the license and note
the provenance of the icon.

For example, keep the license file + icon in a separate directory and
point to the location of the icon in the KDE repository, and perhaps
note the exception in the docs themselves (which, come to think of it,
should probably have a clear "licensing" section noting that the bulk of
the content is licensed CC-BY-SA, with the exception of the LGPL icon;
there may be more exceptions in the future - note there's a whole
_other_ can of worms that arises due to our decision to license the
documentation solely under the CC-BY-SA rather than under both the
CC-BY-SA and the GPL, but we can and should discuss that separately).

We should of course always strive for perfect compliance, but if we're
looking at this from a risk management perspective, I suspect it's not
likely that the KDE project would go after our project aggressively.
If they believed we were not in compliance with their license and
intent, they would most likely just send us a nice email.

I'll come back with a more authoritative answer later, but I think we
can move ahead if we take this fairly cautious approach.

Dan

On Tue, May 08, 2012 at 08:39:24AM -0400, Soulliere, Robert wrote:
> 
> I wonder if the Evergreen Oversight Board or Communications Committee
> could help us make the decision on the legality of using the images at
> KDE? I don't have a comfortable feeling about using it based on what I
> have read on the KDE site. However, if I get a thumbs up from the
> Evergreen Oversight Board, then I would feel at ease and would use the
> image. Since the DIG had been using a questionable image for the past
> few years, I would like to be sure about the image choice. If there is
> any doubt, then I think we need to use the current safe PDF image
> currently in place.
> 
> Thanks,
> Robert
> 
> 
> 
> Robert Soulliere, BA (Hons), MLIS
> Systems Librarian
> Mohawk College Library
> robert.soulliere at mohawkcollege.ca
> Telephone: 905 575 1212 x3936
> Fax: 905 575 2011
> ________________________________________
> From: open-ils-documentation-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org [open-ils-documentation-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Yamil Suarez [ysuarez at berklee.edu]
> Sent: May 7, 2012 7:20 PM
> To: Documentation discussion for Evergreen software
> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] PDF icon: licensing concern & fix
> 
> On May 7, 2012, at 6:42 PM, Lazar, Alexey Vladimirovich wrote:
> 
> > Got it.  This is where it's at: http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/kdesupport/oxygen-icons/
> > .  There is licensing information, and various icons of various
> > sizes.  The PDF icon is titled application-pdf.png and is in a
> > "mimetypes" folder for a given size.
> >
> > Alexey Lazar
> > PALS
> > Information System Developer and Integrator
> > 507-389-2907
> > http://www.mnpals.org/
> >
> > On May 7, 2012, at 16:15 , Yamil Suarez wrote:
> >
> 
> Cool, this is getting us closer, though the copying license attached
> to the icons in that collection seems to be only "GNU Lesser General
> Public License v. 3 (LGPL)". This could be an issue since our
> documentation is CC-BY-SA and not LGPL, but I know there are some
> similarities between the two.
> 
> Here is the license listed for set of icons Alexey sent in:
> http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/kdesupport/oxygen-icons/COPYING?view=markup
> 
> I am just trying to play it safe, and would welcome the input from
> others more familiar with these type of licensing issues.
> 
> Yamil
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