permaculture

[Heide Hermary <heidehermary@pacificcoast.net>]

You guys are losing me here:

What is GPL?

Also: do we have different copyright laws in different countries? Here in
Canada any document is automatically protected by copyright the moment it is
written. The formal process of registering the copyright is not necessary,
nor is it necessary to insert the copyright symbol.

As for personal profit from information posted on the web (this goes both
ways): there is so much free stuff available that we take it for granted,
although I am seeing that change.  Creating and maintaining a web site is
expensive, and unless someone has lots of free time and money, or funding
from outside sources, these costs have to be at least recovered somehow.
Especially if other people are going to profit from the information.

The web is also a really good communications tool to let people know that
valuable information is available, and how to obtain it.  No-one would
expect to just help themselves to the books in a bookstore without paying
for them, so why expect web authors to work for free??

There is also something called plagiarism: doesn't make you look good in
front of your peers. Even if the intentions are good, a clear distinction
should be made between other people's work, and one's own.  If you think the
other person's work isn't good enough, or outdated: why use it then. Some
people think it makes them look better if they compare themselves favourably
to someone else, but does it???

I know this is all a grey area: what is (should be) in the public domain,
what isn't. We are going to see huge surcharges on CDs and CD writers to
compensate the industry for illegal copying.  I guess we just have to make
sure our names are on the list of recipients!!

In the meantime we should respect those who don't wish to have their
publications used in specific ways (especially amongst members of a small
group like this who share so freely of their time and knowledge), and be
grateful that so much information is available to us, at the click of a
mouse button. I personally wouldn't be doing half the things I do now
without the convenience of the web.  There isn't a library in the world
where I could find all this information in one place.

And finally, Thilo, if you just simply wanted to show David how fragile the
PDF security is, why didn't you just send him a personal e-mail?

Heide

Thilo Pfennig wrote:

> On Tue, 2002-03-26 at 01:55, Steve Diver wrote:
>
> One more thing. You wrote:
>
> >  No wonder paragraphs from this publication show up all
> > over the web with no credit to the original author.
>
> But you also cited my copyright notice:
>
>    3.Give due credit to previous authors and major contributors.
>
> So if I gave you credit in the first paragraph and I tell people to give
> credit to the original authors you can not blame me that there are
> people who break the GPL license wih the wrong kind of derivative work.
>
> I for myself am not willing to cooperate without licenses like the GPL.
>
> I am not interested in credit, allthough it is fun to have some. And
> honestly I am happy if permaculture information spreads all over the
> internet. I am less interested in the earnings of PC authors than in the
> PC ideas in practice. Nevertheless I respect other opinions, but this is
> not compatible to my approach.
>
> --
> Thilo Pfennig
> http://www.alternativ.net/edv/
>
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