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

[Simon Cropper]

On Tuesday 03 August 2010 4:01:51 pm Hamish wrote:

> 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.

This idea has merit. It would be interesting to see if a Creative Commons 
license could be developed that somehow encapsulated these ideas.

Makes me wonder though, in a textural non-exact document, how much changes 
would a needed to trigger the loss of attribution or conversely how much 
change would the original author accept before they were willing to forgo 
attribution. A situation 'any change loose attribution' is simple but may not 
be applicable if someone is just fixing a typo. 

> 
> > 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.

I have had similar experiences in the reuse of code where the copyright was 
not specified. I'll need to reinvent the wheel as the author just does not 
respond to my emails.
 
> sometimes, you just have to let go..
> 
> 
> regards,
> Hamish B

-- 
Cheers Simon

	Simon Cropper
	Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd
	PO Box 160 Sunshine 3020
	P: 03 9311 5822. M: 041 830 3437
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