Wiki not editable?

[Patrick W. Barnes]

On Saturday 15 July 2006 21:48, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at jdub.homelinux.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-07-15 at 22:23 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 15, 2006 at 08:59:34PM -0500, Patrick W. Barnes wrote:
> > > > It says "Texts contributed after 2006-02-19 or by members of the
> > > > EditGroup are the licensed under the terms of the Open Publication
> > > > License v1.0 without options, unless otherwise noted."  And it does
> > > > not say _who_ can otherwise note.  While I don't personally agree
> > > > with this specific instance, I also don't see where licensing a page
> > > > under a different license is not allowed.  The wording is a bit
> > > > ambiguous.
> > >
> > > The "unless otherwise noted" is intended to allow the Board, assorted
> > > committees, etc. to handle special cases where the OPL cannot apply,
> > > such as pages where the ACLs have been loosened to allow anyone to
> > > contribute without granting a copyright license. It is not a manner for
> > > contributors to circumvent our licensing requirements. The Fedora
> > > Project holds a
> >
> > You must admit it is ambiguous. Or actually, I'm inclined to say "doesn't
> > seem ambigous at all, but rather clearly states that some content may be
> > licensed differently".
>
> Yes, I tend to agree.  While I'm certainly aware of the intention of
> those words, they are indeed ambiguous.  IMHO, the "unless otherwise
> noted" part either needs to be removed or otherwise clarified.
>

That isn't the place to add clarification.  That's the difference between 
licensing text and policy pages.  It's up to the Board to establish a policy 
about who can name exceptions.  Obvious exceptions include pages that aren't 
covered by the CLA, like the CVSSyncNeeded page.

> > > copyright license for anything that is submitted by a contributor with
> > > a signed CLA. Using the power of that copyright license, the Fedora
> > > Project applies the OPL without options to documentation and website
> > > contributions. That right is not revocable.
> >
> > Unless I'm misunderstanding, the copyright license wording is not so
> > broad as that. Specifically, it says:
> >
> >   2. Contributor Grant of License. You hereby grant to Red Hat, Inc., on
> >      behalf of the Project, and to recipients of software distributed by
> > the Project:
> >
> >       (a) a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty
> >       free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare
> > derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and
> > distribute your Contribution and such derivative works; and,
> >
> >       [... other, patent-related stuff ...]
> >
> > While Red Hat can sublicense under this grant, it doesn't seem to say
> > "may completely relicense".
>
> I also agree with that.

There is no usage case in copyright law that isn't included in those rights.  
Red Hat and the Fedora Project can license contributions in any manner that 
does not extend beyond those rights.  The combination of those two facts 
basically means that Red Hat and the Fedora Project can do anything with the 
contributions.  The CLA stops short of copyright assignment because the 
author retains the same privileges.  Copyright assignment is also not 
possible in some parts of the world.

>
> My intentions here are not to be inflammatory.  Rather they are to
> highlight a potential problem that should be resolved sooner rather than
> later.

I also don't mean to be antagonistic.  I'm just trying to make the facts 
clear.  I'm not on any side with regard to the legal aspects.

-- 
Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
nman64 at n-man.com

http://www.n-man.com/

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