"Verm" <pov### [at] thirteeendynucom> wrote in message 
news:456f09be$1@news.povray.org...
> Chris B wrote:
>> This seems mostly consistent with the clause in the CC Attribution 
>> Share-Alike license that "lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your 
>> work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license 
>> their new creations under the identical terms."
>> I assume this would mean they could modify your include with the same 
>> license on that include, but potentially a different license on other 
>> pieces of their own work that they distribute it with. I don't think this 
>> would stop them selling their work, which could include your work.
>>
>>> I also think the library as a whole should encourage giving credit to
>>> the include and the author of the piece that is used, but I don't think
>>> it needs to be a term in the license. It might be easier to use an
>>> established license, but most of them enforce some display of copyright
>>> being kept with the include file.
>>>
>>
>> The CC Attribution Share-Alike seems to cover that where they say they 
>> should 'credit you'
>
> I believe it says they *must* credit you. There is a difference between 
> "should" and "must".
>

Well I've read it a few times over the past few days and I've got to admit 
that each time I read it it seems to say something slightly different, but 
then it contains some pretty long sentences and the interpretation is highly 
dependant upon the punctuation and capitalisation.

In section 4c of the Attribution Share-Alike legal code they say "You must 
keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to 
the medium or means You are utilizing ..." and, later in the section, after 
talking about the credit identifying the use of a work in a derivative work 
"Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, 
that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such 
credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and 
in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship 
credit."

It's the references to 'may' and 'reasonable' that make me think it's 
probably a 'should' rather than a 'must'.
Because there is no full-stop between the 'reasonable to the medium or 
means' and the place where they start talking about credit, I think it's 
possible to argue that having a big piece of text saying "Verm made this 
chair" in the middle of someones piece of art would be unreasonable to the 
medium or means, whereas a little fast-moving title credit in a film where 
your object featured fairly prominantly would be reasonable.

The same working is used in the CC Attribution Share-Alike and the CC 
Attribution licenses for this.

>
> I'd be wary of forcing people to give credit. I'd say people should be 
> strongly encouraged to give credit but not legally obliged to.
>

I agree. That's the level I'd like too.

>
> Sometimes people genuinely forget where they originally got code from 
> especially if they've heavily hacked it. Also it would get very long 
> winded and tedious having to give credit for every author of every item in 
> a busy scene if each item was taken from the proposed library and each 
> item had been repeatedly modified by different people.
>
> Ideally people should give credit yes, it's disrespectful to the original 
> author not to, but I'd not want to force hobbyist POV hackers to have to 
> keep track of the provenance of every single line of code.
>
> I'm not at all sure how you'd find, or write, a license that strongly 
> encourages people to give credit for any significant contributions without 
> forcing acknowledgment of everyone who's ever touched even a single line 
> of code of the least significant object.
>

I think that's where we're struggling. But, given the difficulty of 
interpreting legal texts, I think it would be challenging to write a new 
license of our own, unless we've got a licensing specialist in our midst 
who'd like to volunteer.

>
> Sorry not a very helpful post - it seems rather negative, but I do really 
> like the idea of an object repository and somehow making it *the* official 
> repository. I also agree it would need a common licence.

Regards,
Chris B.

Post a reply to this message