Hi Alan, Alan Clark wrote:
1. License of the contents on *.opensuse.org sites
ATM, the contents on Wiki (en.o.o and other $LANG.o.o) are published under GFDL 1.2 'unless expressly indicated otherwise'. However, the license for contents on other *.opensuse.org isn't defined (we can only see the description '© 2010 Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.' in footer area on most of the *.opensuse.org sites).
The GFDL terms apply to everything at opensuse.org. See http://en.opensuse.org/Legal
That WAS the point. Since we can read the description 'With the exception of Software, all content on *this website* is made available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 ("GFDL") unless expressly otherwise indicated.' at http://en.opensuse.org/Legal#Copyright_notice , we asked Jürgen Weigert "What does 'this website' refer to? Whole *.opensuse.org (including news.o.o, lizards.o.o, build.o.o and so on)? Or, just only en.o.o?" before, and Sascha told me that he got an answer from him which said "'this site' just means wiki." (I myself didn't get the answer, though). Thanks to your answer, we can understand much clearer than before.
2. Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN?
Copyright law worldwide is remarkably uniform, and on most "free use" issues, the same result is achieved. If you're trying to make a use case that's so close to the line that it's legal in, say, England, but not legal in, say, the United States, you're cutting it way too close to the line. Better to just have a good understanding of general free use principles that are universal and stick to those.
Thanks to your comment again here. But I'm still confused. Things are not that easy. Essentially, "No international copyright law exists (...)" http://depts.washington.edu/uwcopy/Copyright_Law/International_Copyright_Law... And we can refer to various copyright laws from: http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=14076&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html But for example, Japanese law has an article on 'Quotations' [1], while US law has article on 'Fair use' [2] instead of 'Quotations'. According to US law, people may 'fair use' contents from other sites under certain conditions. I think that's why some news sites (for example, linux today [3], LXer [4], entirelyopensource.com [5]) can introduce articles from other sites with some paragraphs of citation. But I could find the explanation: "Fair Use - The fair use defense to copyright infringement under §107 of US copyright law is much broader than international fair use provisions. International fair use exemptions tend to be more specific in nature." [6]. So, if I refer to Japanese law and guidelines, current quotation style of OWN is not appropriate. As far as I know, the borderline between legitimate 'Quotations' or 'Fair Use' and illegal ones may vary among countries and we don't have any universal standard. That's why I have to ask, "Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we act as a part of openSUSE project?" If the answer is "Refer to US law" for example, the sitiation would be much simpler. [1] http://www.cric.or.jp/cric_e/clj/clj.html # Refer to Article 32. [2] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html [3] http://www.linuxtoday.com/ [4] http://lxer.com/ [5] http://www.entirelyopensource.com/ [6] http://depts.washington.edu/uwcopy/Copyright_Law/International_Copyright_Law... Best, -- _/_/ Satoru Matsumoto - openSUSE Member - Japan _/_/ _/_/ Marketing/Weekly News/openFATE Screening Team _/_/ _/_/ mail: helios_reds_at_gmx.net / irc: HeliosReds _/_/ _/_/ http://blog.zaq.ne.jp/opensuse/ _/_/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org