[Aust-NZ] Superficial review of copyright issues related to collection and publication of education material on OSGeo Website (LINK)

[Hamish]

Simon:
> > That why it puzzles me why people are happy with allowing their
> > works to be modified (that is, derivatives created) without ensuring
> > the quality of the derived work is maintained.

Robert Coup:
> Why do you think people will always make it worse? I'd suggest that
> anybody picking it up will intend to make it better, and given they're
> going to the effort, probably will.

I don't have much to add, just to point out a use of No Derivs which is
worth thinking about.

If you stretch your mind a little the EPSG projection database can be
considered documentation of sorts. IIRC their license states that you
can do what you like with it, but if you modify it at all you can no
longer call it the "EPSG" database. They are acting to protect and
preserve their reputation and I can't really fault that when the details
must be exact.


> Or even fixing a bug in your original tutorial.

as far as modifying other people's tutorial or man page docs go, my main
experience with this over the years has been exactly this. fixing typos in
command syntax and updating things to match a newer API. (fwiw, I help
maintain c.400 man pages, often dating back 20+ years..)

Also there have been freely given tutorials provided at times which were
better than anything else out there, but because no copyright statement
was given there was no way to formally update them to match the new version
of the software, and the original author would only respond that he was
working on a new version, but years later it still never arrived. :-(
rather frustrating to have to let the old version just wither.

sometimes, you just have to let go..


regards,
Hamish B