Chris B wrote:
> "Sabrina Kilian" <ykg### [at] vtedu> wrote in message 
> news:456b36c3@news.povray.org...
>> Chris B wrote:
>>> I therefore think we're probably down to picking from the list of 
>>> available
>>> Creative Commons licenses/certificates. Would anyone care to agree or
>>> disagree with that?
>> BSD and MIT licenses might also be an option, since they refer to source
>> code, which SDL is, and binary form, which the final images would be. I
>> didn't read them in their entirety, but I didn't see any references to
>> 'program' or 'executable' in there.
>>
> 
> These both seem good and short and I like the disclaimer, but they do seem 
> to me still to be oriented towards application code. They both speak of 
> software and although we could potentially draw parallels between software 
> and SDL and between binaries and generated images, it does seem a bit like 
> shoving a round peg in a square hole.
> To me the Creative Commons vocabulary, such as 'work' and 'derivative work' 
> seem to better fit what we create.
> 
>> www.opensource.org/licenses has several others that might work,
>> depending on their wording. The Academic Free License looks wordy but
>> seemed general enough to be used for everything.
> 
> There do seem to be quite a few  different licenses there to choose from. 
> Would anyone like to do some homework on those?

I've been trying to read one every few days, just to see what they read
like. So far, not much of a plot and no memorable characters.
> 
>> It seems like we are working backwards, going from established and known
>> licenses and taking out the parts we don't need. Let's start from the
>> ground and work up.
>>
> 
> Good point. I think this list gives us an excellent way to compare the 
> credentials of different licenses. I've tried to map the Creative Commons 
> licenses against this list and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 
> license seems to me to map pretty closely to what you've proposed.
> 
>> So, the issues I can think of are copyright, re-distribution of the
>> include, giving credit, commercial use, and re-distributing it under
>> another license.
>>
>> I don't think we can get rid of copyright. The person who writes each
>> snippet of code would still have the right to give it away, sell it, do
>> what ever they want with their piece of code.
> 
> Agreed. The original author would still have considerable rights, though 
> they could not subsequently sell it under any 'exclusive' distribution 
> agreement.
> I think this leads into an issue that Nemesis has eluded to, that the 
> release that we get the author to 'sign' when contributing the work under 
> the terms of this license would have to be in perpetuity, otherwise they 
> could change their minds later and cause no end of grief for people who had 
> developed derivative works.
> 

Define exclusive[1]. If it is exclusive from this point on, as in the
original author can not release the item again, then yes they could.

I also think there is a way around 'signing' anything. Look at the GPL
for example. If you modify a piece of code and release it back, it too
is GPL. Same works for CC- attribution and share-alike if it is a
derived work. The other way is to just ask them to put the text of the
license in the file they submit, or something like "This file is
licensed under SuchAndSuch, text found www.somewhere.com" No complicated
signing.

>> I also think that the
>> license should enforce the copyright notice in any re-packaged forms of
>> the include. It's a license for use, not a contract for sale of the items.
>>
> 
> 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.

"license their new creations under the identical terms." I'd say that is
pretty clear that derivative works have to be under the same CC
Attribution Share-Alike. It can be released commercially, but the way I
read it all of it would have to be under the same license.

I don't think that the Collective Works clause would fit cleanly with
this. Collective Works "means a work, such as a periodical issue,
anthology or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in
unmodified form, along with a number of other contributions,
constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled
into a collective whole." If a scene is made, and any piece of it relies
on something in the include, this license would force the entire scene
into the same license.

This is the same thing that would come up if we could use GPL for this.



> 
>> 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'
> 
>> Now, re-distributing the entire include seems the easy part. Anyone who
>> downloads a copy should at least be able to pass it on under the same
>> terms they license they received it. I think they should also be able to
>> redistribute part of the include as well, since that would make
>> publishing scene code. I don't think it is necessary for this include to
>> force people using it to put any scene using it under the same license,
>> like the GPL would.
>>
> 
> From reading the CC Attribution Share-Alike, this seems to me to be covered 
> by the clause for Collective Works. I think that cutting and pasting into 
> another file would mean that the new file would have to come under the same 
> license (being a derivative work), but the original include or the 
> derivative work could be distributed as part of a group of files where the 
> other files come under different licensing terms.
> 

I disagree. It would take a lawyer to decide if making a function call
would fall into Collective or Derivative Works. The difference might
come down to how much of the scene it takes up. We could also just
re-define Collective Works to make using the library less tricky.

>> Stuff like the BSD and Creative Commons Attribution licenses would allow
>> them to then re-license it under any other license as well. That would
>> solve any problem with commercial use, since all someone would have to
>> do is re-license the library to them self under terms that would allow
>> it. If Pixar thinks we can make a better glass of water then they can, I
>> say we let them use it.
>>
>> What I don't like about the very open licenses is that ability to take
>> the entire library and bury it in another program without even a mention
>> of it being used. This gets back into the problem of distributing the
>> code vs distributing the final work, but I would prefer to see this
>> license keep the include free. I like the terms of the LGPL for this,
>> but I'm not sure it could be tuned to non-executable use.
>>
> 
> I think that the CC Attribution Share-Alike Clause 4c covers this quite well 
> by requiring derivative works, which presumably includes graphics generated 
> using your objects,  to include 'a credit identifying the use of the Work in 
> the Derivative Work (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original 
> Author," or "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author")' that 
> appears "where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a 
> manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit".
> 
>> Finally, I did some more digging into GNU licenses and found the GFDL,
>> Free Document License. It would take more reading but it might be
>> possible to use something like that, similar to published computer
>> books. "The text (and whole library) is licensed under GFDL, and code
>> snippets (individual items or functions) are free to use in other
>> programs without attribution."  I haven't had time to really read it
>> yet, so that might not be possible, but now I'm going to check some
>> O'Reilly books to see how they word code licenses.
> 
> The next closest is the Creative Commons Attribution License which is a more 
> liberal license that just requires credit to be given for the work (and 
> derivative works where reasonable), but allows subsequent redistribution 
> under stricter licensing conditions. I don't think that the stricter license 
> could subsequently stop people using the copy from povray.org, but could 
> potentially prevent people from reusing some of the works derived from it.
> 
> Would anyone like to summarise how an alternative license maps to these 
> proposed requirements.
> 
> Regards,
> Chris B.
> 
> 

And we could end up with a lot of copies of the library under many
different licenses. Someone later could submit a piece of GPL code to
another archive of it, and anything added to the second one could not
move back into the main archive.

So, what do we want to see it licensed as? Ignore the legal terms for a
while, and let's figure out what we want it to be. Then we can figure
out which license will work.

[1]Legalese seems to have to define every word, I work under the
assumption that even something like 'a' could be defined to be an
elephant if the contract is drawn correctly.

Post a reply to this message