[OSGeo-Discuss] LiveDVD Copyright Ambiguity

[Alex Mandel]

Simon,

Thanks for taking the time to look this over. I'm redirecting the
conversation over to the Live-demo mailing list where I think it will
get more attention.

Short answer, I assume you are referring to the documentation portion of
OSGeo Live, which is also it's website. I believe the correct copyright
is OSGeo & Lisasoft because many of the documents derived from work
Lisasoft originally did (and continues to do). As for new docs as well
as scripts we've been asking people to assign copyright to OSGeo for
sanity purposes. I think we did that fairly consistently with the
scripts (Under LGPL) but appear to have overlooked it on the docs.

I'll take a guess that we meant to stick in Creative Commons Attribution
as the license. Though we may want to discuss and get everyones approval
to move to Attribution Share-Alike.

I've created a ticket for this issue, not sure if we can resolve it in
the next 6 hours before version 4.5 gets finalized (at least for the
German FOSSGIS conf version).

I guess we should also shove in a citation:
OSGeo Live, http://live.osgeo.org, The Open Source Geospatial Foundation


Thanks,
Alex

On 03/16/2011 06:27 PM, Simon Cropper wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I would like ask the question about copyright associated with the Live
> DVD produced by LisaSoft and OSGeo.
> 
> I have been looking over the website and note that the copyright is
> attributed to LisaSoft and/or OSGeo.
> 
> If you work you way down to the html versions of the quickstart guides
> they are also copyrighted to OSGeo. If you work your way back to the RST
> source files for these pages you can see that the authors released their
> work under a 'Creative Commons' license.
> 
> Take the MapGuide as an example...
> 
> 
> https://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/livedvd/gisvm/trunk/doc/en/quickstart/mapguide_quickstart.rst
> 
> 
>       http://live.osgeo.org/quickstart/mapguide_quickstart.html
> 
> Shouldn't the website be 'Creative Commons', or at least the quickstart
> section? At least this is my understanding of the use of CC works.
> 
> Also, I note that most authors of rst files simple inserted 'Creative
> Commons' under the license section. If you go to the CC site there is no
> license specifically called "Creative Commons'.
> 
>       http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
> 
> The license relevant to this work should be unambiguous and works should
> point to the specific deed relevant to the license that they are
> releasing the work under. 'Creative Commons' is not specific enough.
> 
> I know this is a old topic that has been debated before but I would have
> thought that these issues would have been clarified by now - especially
> as the DVD is in its 4th rebirth.
> 
> For debate, I have included the following clause extracted from the FAQ
> webpage on the Creative Commons Site
> 
>        http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ
> 
> Note I have inserted ### comments ### throughout...
> 
> You will notice that none of the ways proposed here to 'properly
> attribute a Creative Commons licensed work' have been met.
> 
> As a group OSGeo should be aspiring to ensure any new works *at least*
> have unambiguous licensing both for the original works and the Live DVD.
> 
> *** start quote ***
> 
> How do I properly attribute a Creative Commons licensed work?
> 
> All current CC licenses require that you attribute the original
> author(s) ### not done in final product ###. If the copyright holder has
> not specified any particular way to attribute them, this does not mean
> that you do not have to give attribution. It simply means that you will
> have to give attribution to the best of your ability with the
> information you do have. Generally speaking, this implies five things:
> 
>     * If the work itself contains any copyright notices placed there by
> the copyright holder, you must leave those notices intact, or reproduce
> them in a way that is reasonable to the medium in which you are
> re-publishing the work ### authorship and license placed in RST files
> not maintained in HTML ###
> 
>     * Cite the author's name, screen name, user identification, etc. If
> you are publishing on the Internet, it is nice to link that name to the
> person's profile page, if such a page exists ### not done ###
> 
>     * Cite the work's title or name, if such a thing exists. If you are
> publishing on the Internet, it is nice to link the name or title
> directly to the original work ### not done, list of contributors not
> linked back to contributions, also contributors section hidden under
> sponsorships page ###
> 
>     * Cite the specific CC license the work is under. If you are
> publishing on the Internet, it is nice if the license citation links to
> the license on the CC website. ### not done, in fact I could not find
> any mention of CC on the LiveDVD webpage ###
> 
>     * If you are making a derivative work or adaptation, in addition to
> the above, you need to identify that your work is a derivative work
> i.e., “This is a Finnish translation of the [original work] by
> [author].” or “Screenplay based on [original work] by [author].”
> ### not done ###
> 
> In the case where a copyright holder does choose to specify the manner
> of attribution, in addition to the requirement of leaving intact
> existing copyright notices, they are only able to require certain
> things. Namely:
> 
>     * They may require that you attribute the work to a certain name,
> pseudonym or even an organization of some sort. ### not done ###
> 
>     * They may require you to associate/provide a certain URL (web
> address) for the work. ### not done ###
> 
> If you are interested to see what an actual license ("legalcode") has to
> say about attribution, you can use the CC Attribution 3.0 Unported
> license as an example. Please note that this is only an example, and you
> should always read the appropriate section of the specific license in
> question ... usually, but perhaps not always, section 4(b) or 4(c):
> 
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
> 
> *** end quote ***
>