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cc-licenses - Re: 5a (Right to contribute)

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: 5a (Right to contribute)
  • Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 12:41:11 +0000

On 16 Feb 2004, at 22:51, Rob Myers wrote:

The OGL and the revised BSD license are my favourite licenses.

That should have been "after the CC licenses", which I've released all my art under. I haven't OGL'ed or BSD'ed anything. :-)

This is very important, as the SCO debacle [...] show.

By which I don't mean that SCO have a point, I mean that the license doesn't prevent them claiming to the press that they have a point. Quoting Groklaw (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040217231311568):

" SCO has been trying to tell the world that the no warranty provision in the GPL is the same as no indemnification for IP claims. It's not the same thing at all. It's saying if there is a problem with the code, sorry, but you got it for free. Microsoft's EULAs say very similar things. That's a clause that is in the GPL because individual coders are really not in a financial position to provide tech support. But the no warranty clause does not intend to say that if there is an IP issue, the end user is the one to be sued. Only SCO thinks that way"

Putting something in the license to prevent this sort of "misunderstanding" without it being so strongly worded as to upset bloggers is good. (I'm not sure about Groklaw's take on the clause being to avoid "tech support", though...)

Groklaw also mentioned the FSF's fairly stringent requirements for signing over of IP for their Open projects (another section 5 :-) ):

http://www.fsf.org/prep/maintain_5.html

"Before incorporating significant changes, make sure that the person who wrote the changes has signed copyright papers and that the Free Software Foundation has received and signed them. We may also need a disclaimer from the person's employer."

This is handled externally to the license, so might support the idea of this sort of thing being best handled external to the license. But I'd argue that for general practice it's weaker as it's something people can (choose to) forget to do.

So I would still argue for a revised clause 5a along the lines of the WOtC and IBM licenses mentioned in this thread.

- Rob.






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