[opensuse-project] License and copyright issues that openSUSE Weekly News team are coming up against now
Hello mates,
we, openSUSE Weekly News (OWN) team are now facing license and copyright issues. There are some things which are not clear to us. Although most of the issues affect just OWN, I think those issues should be shared by whole project.
Sascha, editor in chief of OWN have proposed that we should publish OWN under CC BY-SA 3.0 license [1].
@Sascha Please explain the reason why you think it is better to publish OWN under that license including: * What kind of benefits can we expect by applying CC BY-SA 3.0 license? * Why should we apply CC BY-SA 3.0 instead of other similar licenses?
<Explanation from Sascha>
The CC BY-SA helps us to give a clear License with clear Restriction. If we publishing under CC BY-SA or another CC License everyone can use our Weekly News, write anything from his content, and republish it.
And BTW: Ubuntu and Fedora Newsletters are under CC BY-SA too.
BTW2: But this is set on the bottom of every Site inside the normal Site.
The GFDL which is used by openSUSE is a good License too. But it is needed to paste the whole License inside every new produce. If we're using CC then is a Link enough.
</Explanation from Sascha>
What are the points that are not yet clear enough? # Please do not confound copyright with license.
* For contents on Wiki, license is clearly specified: "All content is made available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 ("GFDL") unless expressly indicated otherwise."[2] But how about contents on other *.opensuse.org sites?
* Can we include contents, of which licenses aren't clearly mentioned, in OWN and publish under CC BY-SA 3.0 license? Or, should we "expressly indicate otherwise" the license of each article, even if the article is from news.o.o, lizards.o.o, lists.o.o and planet.o.o? (If we should do so, we have to "expressly indicate otherwise" the license of almost every article, because most of the articles now on OWN are from those sites or external news sites or private blogs. But if 90% of the contents are not under CC BY-SA or any other clear license, do we really need to publish OWN under that license?)
* Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to?
<from Sascha>
In Germany we have the "Citiation Law", who says, that everyone can paste from every written document into a new one. But it can't be used for the whole document, just for a citiation (Maybe 3 Paragraphs or so...) Exists any similar Law in other Countries too?
</from Sascha>
* Can current drawing (citation) from external sites or personal blogs be considered "legitimate"? (This is closely related to the above question.)
- As far as I refer to Japanese copyright law and guidelines, our current style doesn't meet the requirements for "legitimate quotation".
- For example, if AuthorA wrote an article titled "About B" on SiteC that says "I love cats. In particular, I love kittens, because they are so cute! But some don't like cats." ...
-- Our current style: "SiteC/AutherA: About B" - "I love cats. In particular, I love kittens, because they are so cute! (...)" cannot be considered legitimate quotation. This style may be considered "reprint" and if there is a mention "all rights reserved" on the original SiteC, we are not allowed to reprint except otherwise specially permitted.
--- And this means, that we cannot "reprint" articles from *.opensuse.org except Wiki (contents on Wiki are published under GFDL), because we can read the mention "© 2010 Novell, Inc. All rights reserved." on the bottom of each page on those sites.
-- If we introduce the original article like: "SiteC/AutherA: About B" - In this article, AuthorA is making out "I love cats. In particular, I love kittens, because they are so cute! (...)". I totally agree. I think kitten is the most cutest animal on earth! -- this can be considered legitimate quotation.
# Therefore, Ubuntu people don't just "copy & paste" parts of articles from external sites in their Weekly News. When they introduce an article from external site, they are going to write an introductory article by themselves and include citation from original article in it.
* How can we solve these problems?
- Can we ask Novell to apply CC BY-SA 3.0 license for every content on *.opensuse.org including Wiki? If that'll be OK, most of the problems will be solved.
-- In that case, do we need Contributor License Agreement [3] to explain that all the contributed documents on *.opensuse.org will be published under CC BY-SA 3.0 license?
-- But still, how we can deal with articles which are aggregated on planet.o.o wouldn't that clear. Will all the authors accept that their articles will be published under CC BY-SA 3.0 license?
* How should we deal with articles from external sites in OWN? Alternatives may be:
- We won't introduce articles from external sites anymore.
- We will just introduce sites name, authors name, title and link URL with short comment (For example: "In this article, the author explains how to ...") by editors.
- When we introduce an article from external site, editor will write an introductory article for that as Gertjan does for Forums section now. (I think this is the best option. But in order to do so, we need much more help.)
We need all those points to be clear. Suggestions and proposals are welcome.
[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/ [2] http://en.opensuse.org/Terms_of_site#Copyright_notice [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
Best,
Hello Mates,
i just would like to share your mind with this topic :-)
2011/1/25 Satoru Matsumoto helios_reds@gmx.net:
Hello mates,
we, openSUSE Weekly News (OWN) team are now facing license and copyright issues. There are some things which are not clear to us. Although most of the issues affect just OWN, I think those issues should be shared by whole project.
Sascha, editor in chief of OWN have proposed that we should publish OWN under CC BY-SA 3.0 license [1].
@Sascha Please explain the reason why you think it is better to publish OWN under that license including:
- What kind of benefits can we expect by applying CC BY-SA 3.0 license?
- Why should we apply CC BY-SA 3.0 instead of other similar licenses?
<Explanation from Sascha>
The CC BY-SA helps us to give a clear License with clear Restriction. If we publishing under CC BY-SA or another CC License everyone can use our Weekly News, write anything from his content, and republish it.
And BTW: Ubuntu and Fedora Newsletters are under CC BY-SA too.
BTW2: But this is set on the bottom of every Site inside the normal Site.
The GFDL which is used by openSUSE is a good License too. But it is needed to paste the whole License inside every new produce. If we're using CC then is a Link enough.
</Explanation from Sascha>
What are the points that are not yet clear enough? # Please do not confound copyright with license.
- For contents on Wiki, license is clearly specified: "All content is
made available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 ("GFDL") unless expressly indicated otherwise."[2] But how about contents on other *.opensuse.org sites?
- Can we include contents, of which licenses aren't clearly mentioned,
in OWN and publish under CC BY-SA 3.0 license? Or, should we "expressly indicate otherwise" the license of each article, even if the article is from news.o.o, lizards.o.o, lists.o.o and planet.o.o? (If we should do so, we have to "expressly indicate otherwise" the license of almost every article, because most of the articles now on OWN are from those sites or external news sites or private blogs. But if 90% of the contents are not under CC BY-SA or any other clear license, do we really need to publish OWN under that license?)
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to?
<from Sascha>
In Germany we have the "Citiation Law", who says, that everyone can paste from every written document into a new one. But it can't be used for the whole document, just for a citiation (Maybe 3 Paragraphs or so...) Exists any similar Law in other Countries too?
</from Sascha>
- Can current drawing (citation) from external sites or personal blogs
be considered "legitimate"? (This is closely related to the above question.)
- As far as I refer to Japanese copyright law and guidelines, our
current style doesn't meet the requirements for "legitimate quotation".
- For example, if AuthorA wrote an article titled "About B" on SiteC
that says "I love cats. In particular, I love kittens, because they are so cute! But some don't like cats." ...
-- Our current style: "SiteC/AutherA: About B" - "I love cats. In particular, I love kittens, because they are so cute! (...)" cannot be considered legitimate quotation. This style may be considered "reprint" and if there is a mention "all rights reserved" on the original SiteC, we are not allowed to reprint except otherwise specially permitted.
--- And this means, that we cannot "reprint" articles from *.opensuse.org except Wiki (contents on Wiki are published under GFDL), because we can read the mention "© 2010 Novell, Inc. All rights reserved." on the bottom of each page on those sites.
-- If we introduce the original article like: "SiteC/AutherA: About B" - In this article, AuthorA is making out "I love cats. In particular, I love kittens, because they are so cute! (...)". I totally agree. I think kitten is the most cutest animal on earth! -- this can be considered legitimate quotation.
# Therefore, Ubuntu people don't just "copy & paste" parts of articles from external sites in their Weekly News. When they introduce an article from external site, they are going to write an introductory article by themselves and include citation from original article in it.
- How can we solve these problems?
- Can we ask Novell to apply CC BY-SA 3.0 license for every content on
*.opensuse.org including Wiki? If that'll be OK, most of the problems will be solved.
-- In that case, do we need Contributor License Agreement [3] to explain that all the contributed documents on *.opensuse.org will be published under CC BY-SA 3.0 license?
-- But still, how we can deal with articles which are aggregated on planet.o.o wouldn't that clear. Will all the authors accept that their articles will be published under CC BY-SA 3.0 license?
- How should we deal with articles from external sites in OWN?
Alternatives may be:
We won't introduce articles from external sites anymore.
We will just introduce sites name, authors name, title and link URL
with short comment (For example: "In this article, the author explains how to ...") by editors.
Sascha can you please give further information about external sites? What I would like to know is if I write an article in my blog an blogspot am I an external site or you refer as external sites sites like Linux format and Softpedia?
- When we introduce an article from external site, editor will write an
introductory article for that as Gertjan does for Forums section now. (I think this is the best option. But in order to do so, we need much more help.)
We need all those points to be clear. Suggestions and proposals are welcome.
[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/ [2] http://en.opensuse.org/Terms_of_site#Copyright_notice [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
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
Thanks Kostas
On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:04:53 +0200 Kostas Koudaras warlordfff-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org wrote: <snip>
Sascha can you please give further information about external sites? What I would like to know is if I write an article in my blog an blogspot am I an external site or you refer as external sites sites like Linux format and Softpedia?
Hi Yes, perhaps some examples of actual sites/links/whatever that are potential problems to require a change to the status quo.
On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:06:11 -0600, Malcolm wrote:
Yes, perhaps some examples of actual sites/links/whatever that are potential problems to require a change to the status quo.
I would concur. The only time I could see an issue coming up is if the copyright owner objected to the usage of the material. While I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me that anyone other than the copyright owner wouldn't have standing to object to it, and I believe the legal principle of "standing" would apply in most if not all jurisdictions.
Jim
Jim Henderson wrote:
On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:06:11 -0600, Malcolm wrote:
Yes, perhaps some examples of actual sites/links/whatever that are potential problems to require a change to the status quo.
I would concur. The only time I could see an issue coming up is if the copyright owner objected to the usage of the material. While I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me that anyone other than the copyright owner wouldn't have standing to object to it, and I believe the legal principle of "standing" would apply in most if not all jurisdictions.
Thanks for your comments, Malcolm and Jim.
As I explained in another post, most of the articles which OWN introduce now are *not clearly permitted* to reprint, republish and modify. In particular, on most of the corporations' site, they state "All rights reserved." Although I'm not an expert in this area either, as far as I understand, we can't *reprint* articles without permissions by copyright owners.
I can agree, that 99.99% we won't be charged with violation of copyright, because most of the authors want their works to be read by as many readers as possible. But this doesn't mean we are legitimate.
On the other hand, most of the copyright laws contain special exemptions, which says, *appropriate* citations are permitted without copyright owners consent. But what are considered the *legitimate* and *appropriate* citations depends on which country's copyright law and guidelines we should refer to.
Best,
So... Am I the only confused with all that legal stuff? ;-) Bottom line,I don't have a problem publishing my articles at OWN, so can anyone write a what-to-do so that our articles at our blogs or anything else we have will have the proper copyright and the proper licenses for that? Thanks in advance Kostas
2011/1/27 Satoru Matsumoto helios_reds@gmx.net:
Jim Henderson wrote:
On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:06:11 -0600, Malcolm wrote:
Yes, perhaps some examples of actual sites/links/whatever that are potential problems to require a change to the status quo.
I would concur. The only time I could see an issue coming up is if the copyright owner objected to the usage of the material. While I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me that anyone other than the copyright owner wouldn't have standing to object to it, and I believe the legal principle of "standing" would apply in most if not all jurisdictions.
Thanks for your comments, Malcolm and Jim.
As I explained in another post, most of the articles which OWN introduce now are *not clearly permitted* to reprint, republish and modify. In particular, on most of the corporations' site, they state "All rights reserved." Although I'm not an expert in this area either, as far as I understand, we can't *reprint* articles without permissions by copyright owners.
I can agree, that 99.99% we won't be charged with violation of copyright, because most of the authors want their works to be read by as many readers as possible. But this doesn't mean we are legitimate.
On the other hand, most of the copyright laws contain special exemptions, which says, *appropriate* citations are permitted without copyright owners consent. But what are considered the *legitimate* and *appropriate* citations depends on which country's copyright law and guidelines we should refer to.
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
Hello Kostas,
Kostas Koudaras warlordfff@gmail.com wrote at Thursday 27 January 2011:
So... Am I the only confused with all that legal stuff? ;-) Bottom line,I don't have a problem publishing my articles at OWN, so can anyone write a what-to-do so that our articles at our blogs or anything else we have will have the proper copyright and the proper licenses for that? Thanks in advance
I'm not an Expert too ;-)
But if i understand this right, then if you create a new Document on your Page, you are the Copyright Holder. And you can set (c) 2011 by XXX. With setting CC or any other to your Page you give others a permission to use your Work.
A small HowTo for Wordpress and Blogger is given there as Example: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Publish/Text#Blog
So... Am I the only confused with all that legal stuff? ;-) Bottom line,I don't have a problem publishing my articles at OWN, so can anyone write a what-to-do so that our articles at our blogs or anything else we have will have the proper copyright and the proper licenses for that? Thanks in advance
I'm not an Expert too ;-)
But if i understand this right, then if you create a new Document on your Page, you are the Copyright Holder. And you can set (c) 2011 by XXX. With setting CC or any other to your Page you give others a permission to use your Work.
A small HowTo for Wordpress and Blogger is given there as Example: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Publish/Text#Blog
I believe (I'm not an IP lawyer, but I've worked with IP for some year) that the copyright vests in the author and is there from the time the work is created, not just from publication. So if you write your blog in a open office and copy it into the blog page, the first step creates the copyright and the second step (publication) is just that, publication.
When you publish something you are not giving free licence to people to copy your work, you have just given people permission (a licence) to read it. If you want to permit people to do more, you should add a licence statement. As most bloggers want other people to redistribute their work, one of the CC licences which permits this is a good idea. It also means that OWN can't use material from any sites (? pages) which don't have a licence statement.
I believe also (but I'd take legal advice in this circumstance) that the country where the author is ordinarily resident is the country whose copyright law applies. If this is true, then the openSUSE sites have material with copyright created under many countries' laws.
I believe also (with the same rider) that the publication is a simpler matter as the publisher can state in the licence what legal framework applies. The tricky bits here are the people who put up their material with no licence statement (= no permission to copy and reuse) and whether openSUSE or the blog site owner is the publisher (not a desirable situation as you then also get liability for any slip-ups) or whether the author (or person who puts the material up) is the publisher. I don't know.
I believe (UK law here) also that if OWN use material from a site within the licence granted by that site, and it subsequently turns out that the material had been used without permission by the original site, then all we would have to do is take the material down when notified, or request (and hopefully receive) permission. That's assuming we can prove that the source from which we took the material seemed to grant us a licence to use the material. If not, then we may get whacked for breach of copyright. So we need to keep records of the source and the licence granted at the time the material was taken.
Some countries have laws about fair usage, usually automatically granting a limited licence to copy limited parts of a work for education, research or criticism purposes. These fair use provisions are not universal, and in some countries (I believe the UK is one such) are "custom and practice" but not, strictly speaking, within the letter of the law.
I suggest OWN approach a good IP lawyer for a bit of pro-bono opinion about open-source blogs and newsletters.
Yours David
On Sat, 29 Jan 2011 20:26:07 -0000 "Administrator" admin-JJaFKVBkT/BLBidhBXjKY5m6VD3zJD3B0E9HWUfgJXw@public.gmane.org wrote:
I suggest OWN approach a good IP lawyer for a bit of pro-bono opinion about open-source blogs and newsletters.
Yours David
Hi Maybe David C. Rankin or Martin Seidler can offer some free advice....
Hello Malcolm,
Malcolm malcolm_lewis@bellsouth.net wrote at Saturday 29 January 2011:
wrote:
I suggest OWN approach a good IP lawyer for a bit of pro-bono opinion about open-source blogs and newsletters.
Yours David
Hi Maybe David C. Rankin or Martin Seidler can offer some free advice....
Sure, your welcome :-)
On Sat, 29 Jan 2011 22:47:14 +0100 "Sascha 'saigkill' Manns" samannsml-bGfVpndWla9DPfheJLI6IQ@public.gmane.org wrote:
Hello Malcolm,
Malcolm malcolm_lewis-Bdlq13kUjeyLZ21kGMrzwg@public.gmane.org wrote at Saturday 29 January 2011:
wrote:
I suggest OWN approach a good IP lawyer for a bit of pro-bono opinion about open-source blogs and newsletters.
Yours David
Hi Maybe David C. Rankin or Martin Seidler can offer some free advice....
Sure, your welcome :-)
Hi I've pinged Martin to read and comment, hopefully he will ;)
Am 29/01/11 22:02, schrieb Malcolm:
On Sat, 29 Jan 2011 20:26:07 -0000 "Administrator" admin-JJaFKVBkT/BLBidhBXjKY5m6VD3zJD3B0E9HWUfgJXw@public.gmane.org wrote:
I suggest OWN approach a good IP lawyer for a bit of pro-bono opinion about open-source blogs and newsletters.
Yours David
Hi Maybe David C. Rankin or Martin Seidler can offer some free advice....
Hope nobody would think of that as a 'real' legal advice - if no insurance in paid nobody would like to have liability for their advice (regardless of the profession in the real live).
And even a normal paid insurance of a German layer would not offer coverage for cases with relation to "Non-European" jurisdiction...
Regards pistazienfresser
On Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:17:59 +0900, Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
As I explained in another post, most of the articles which OWN introduce now are *not clearly permitted* to reprint, republish and modify. In particular, on most of the corporations' site, they state "All rights reserved." Although I'm not an expert in this area either, as far as I understand, we can't *reprint* articles without permissions by copyright owners.
I can agree, that 99.99% we won't be charged with violation of copyright, because most of the authors want their works to be read by as many readers as possible. But this doesn't mean we are legitimate.
On the other hand, most of the copyright laws contain special exemptions, which says, *appropriate* citations are permitted without copyright owners consent. But what are considered the *legitimate* and *appropriate* citations depends on which country's copyright law and guidelines we should refer to.
I see, I had understood you to be asking about the copyrights on OWN's articles, not on the articles being used in OWN.
I should caveat that I'm not a lawyer, It might be worthwhile to discuss this with someone with actual legal background in international copyright issues than to discuss within the community.
It probably depends on whether OWN reproduces articles in their entirety or uses a short excerpt and then a link to the original article.
Another option would be simply to ask each author for permission before publication in OWN. If you receive express written permission to include a specific third party article in OWN, then you should be in the clear. You might also be able to get blanket permission to use articles from specific sites.
Jim
On Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:24:56 +0000 (UTC) Jim Henderson hendersj-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:17:59 +0900, Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
As I explained in another post, most of the articles which OWN introduce now are *not clearly permitted* to reprint, republish and modify. In particular, on most of the corporations' site, they state "All rights reserved." Although I'm not an expert in this area either, as far as I understand, we can't *reprint* articles without permissions by copyright owners.
I can agree, that 99.99% we won't be charged with violation of copyright, because most of the authors want their works to be read by as many readers as possible. But this doesn't mean we are legitimate.
On the other hand, most of the copyright laws contain special exemptions, which says, *appropriate* citations are permitted without copyright owners consent. But what are considered the *legitimate* and *appropriate* citations depends on which country's copyright law and guidelines we should refer to.
I see, I had understood you to be asking about the copyrights on OWN's articles, not on the articles being used in OWN.
I should caveat that I'm not a lawyer, It might be worthwhile to discuss this with someone with actual legal background in international copyright issues than to discuss within the community.
It probably depends on whether OWN reproduces articles in their entirety or uses a short excerpt and then a link to the original article.
Another option would be simply to ask each author for permission before publication in OWN. If you receive express written permission to include a specific third party article in OWN, then you should be in the clear. You might also be able to get blanket permission to use articles from specific sites.
Jim
Hi From my perspective as part of the Forum team I like the idea that just a synopsis is in the News Letter and then the reader can click through to the forums to read the whole item (Some threads can be novels in their own right...). It raises awareness of the Forum per se as well as keeping up the hit counter which is always good when the question is asked about forum usage.
From my perspective as an openSUSE Forum contributor, I like the idea that information I post or a howto remains in the forum. I don't like the idea that an article for a howto may end up on a third party site whether or not it's attributed to myself.
Am 27/01/11 18:24, schrieb Jim Henderson:
On Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:17:59 +0900, Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
As I explained in another post, most of the articles which OWN introduce now are *not clearly permitted* to reprint, republish and modify. In particular, on most of the corporations' site, they state "All rights reserved." Although I'm not an expert in this area either, as far as I understand, we can't *reprint* articles without permissions by copyright owners.
I can agree, that 99.99% we won't be charged with violation of copyright, because most of the authors want their works to be read by as many readers as possible. But this doesn't mean we are legitimate.
On the other hand, most of the copyright laws contain special exemptions, which says, *appropriate* citations are permitted without copyright owners consent. But what are considered the *legitimate* and *appropriate* citations depends on which country's copyright law and guidelines we should refer to.
I see, I had understood you to be asking about the copyrights on OWN's articles, not on the articles being used in OWN.
I should caveat that I'm not a lawyer, It might be worthwhile to discuss this with someone with actual legal background in international copyright issues than to discuss within the community.
It probably depends on whether OWN reproduces articles in their entirety or uses a short excerpt and then a link to the original article.
Another option would be simply to ask each author for permission before publication in OWN. If you receive express written permission to include a specific third party article in OWN, then you should be in the clear. You might also be able to get blanket permission to use articles from specific sites.
Jim
Maybe you could just friendly ask the orignial authors and publishing companies what they think of the creative commons licenses[1] and of you citing practice? Or are you afraid of waking sleeping lions?
Regards pistazienfresser
[1] in what form ever - for special language forms of the News there might be the 'national' forms of CC the best - not only translated but also adapted to the different jurisdictions.
Am 26/01/11 22:34, schrieb Jim Henderson:
On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:06:11 -0600, Malcolm wrote:
Yes, perhaps some examples of actual sites/links/whatever that are potential problems to require a change to the status quo.
I would concur. The only time I could see an issue coming up is if the copyright owner objected to the usage of the material. While I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me that anyone other than the copyright owner wouldn't have standing to object to it, and I believe the legal principle of "standing" would apply in most if not all jurisdictions.
Jim ()
I. In General: If there is no complaint there is no in most cases and jurisdiction no process [1] (with e. g. the exception of criminal charges in what in most jurisdictions an other principle is ruling). II. A principle similar to your described 'standing'[2]exists e. g. in the German jurisdiction and is named there Klagebefugnis or more special as part of the Klagebefugnis the (die) Beschwer[4]. III. In German law (and probably in the systems of law that are likely to that [5] the focus is lying more on the individual/natural person (individuum) that has created the work than on the commercial right to publish that content ('copyright').[6]
IV. If the authors of the openSUSE Weekly News want to publish their work under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) - why not. In my opinion that would have many advantages.
But I do not see much advantage according to the possibility/thread of possible complaints because of violating any copyright/creator's rights. For that an effective hold-harmless agreement or indemnification clause or insurance may make sense (but I do not know who should pay for it [in case]):
The creation of a juristic person/legal entity for openSUSE foundation, union/society [de: Verein]) may help there in the long term.
[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispositionsmaxime including: "nullo actore, nullus iudex" [2] and similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_%28law%29 [3] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klagebefugnis [4] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beschwer [5] compare: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtskreis [6] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Urheberrecht#.C3.9Cbertragbarkeit_des...
Regards Martin (pistazienfresser)
Hello Kostas
Kostas Koudaras warlordfff@gmail.com wrote at Wednesday 26 January 2011:
- How should we deal with articles from external sites in OWN?
Alternatives may be:
We won't introduce articles from external sites anymore.
We will just introduce sites name, authors name, title and link
URL with short comment (For example: "In this article, the author explains how to ...") by editors.
Sascha can you please give further information about external sites? What I would like to know is if I write an article in my blog an blogspot am I an external site or you refer as external sites sites like Linux format and Softpedia?
From my POV all Sites who are outside *.opensuse.org are external. What helps is, if the Blogger license their work as CC. Then we can handle the Article better. So if you are an Blogger without an CC (or another free license) please put it on your Blogsite. Ideas you can get in http://saigkill.wordpress.com
On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 23:01:38 +0100, Sascha 'saigkill' Manns wrote:
What helps is, if the Blogger license their work as CC.
The key here is "their work" - if they take an article from another site and post it on their blog, then it's not their work, it's still owned by the organisation that originally published it (or individual, depending on circumstances). To be done properly, the article would/should include the copyright notice, and should also state that reproduction is allowed as long as the copyright notice is included.
If there are sites that are using articles improperly, then they should be advised to include that copyright notice on material that they did not create.
Jim
Sascha 'saigkill' Manns wrote:
Kostas Koudaras warlordfff@gmail.com wrote at Wednesday 26 January 2011:
- How should we deal with articles from external sites in OWN?
Alternatives may be:
We won't introduce articles from external sites anymore.
We will just introduce sites name, authors name, title and link
URL with short comment (For example: "In this article, the author explains how to ...") by editors.
Sascha can you please give further information about external sites? What I would like to know is if I write an article in my blog an blogspot am I an external site or you refer as external sites sites like Linux format and Softpedia?
From my POV all Sites who are outside *.opensuse.org are external. What helps is, if the Blogger license their work as CC. Then we can handle the Article better. So if you are an Blogger without an CC (or another free license) please put it on your Blogsite. Ideas you can get in http://saigkill.wordpress.com
To make things understandable, I'm going to categorize articles which we have in OWN now. # [copyright owner / license]
One of the important thing here is, that copyright and license are not the same thing. Only the copyright owner can decide which license to apply for its works.
1. Internal articles 1.1. Articles on wiki.opensuse.org (including $LANG.o.o) [Novell, Inc. / GFDL 1.2] 1.2. Articles on *.opensuse.org (including {news,lizards,lists}.o.o) [Novell, Inc. / undefined (*1)]
2. External articles 2.1. Personal blogs 2.1.1. Blogs which are aggregated on planet.o.o (except 1.2) [each author (*2) / various (*3)] 2.1.2. Blogs other than 2.1.1 [each author / various (*3)] 2.2. Articles on organozations' sites 2.2.1. Articles on FLOSS organizations or communities' sites (Linux.com, kde.org, TDF, ...) [each organization or community / various] 2.2.2. Articles on corporations' site (linux-magazine.com, h-online.com, ...) [each corporation / various (*4)]
*1 It is just mentioned "All rights reserved." *2 There's a description on the foot of planet.o.o: "© 2010 Pascal Bleser and the openSUSE Community.", though. *3 Often not defined clearly. *4 In most cases, "All rights reserved."
You can see, most of the articles are *not clearly permitted* to reprint, republish and modify.
We don't have any right to change the licenses of articles on external sites. But how about those on internal sites? That's why I wrote in the top post:
- Can we ask Novell to apply CC BY-SA 3.0 license for every content on *.opensuse.org including Wiki? If that'll be OK, most of the problems will be solved.
In addtion, if we can apply CC BY-SA license for the articles which are aggregated on planet.o.o (2.1.1 in above list), the situation would be much better. Is there any good way to get those authors' consent?
# This is the reason why I asked in the top post: "Do we need # Contributor License Agreement?"
Best,
Hello Satoru,
Satoru Matsumoto helios_reds@gmx.net wrote at Thursday 27 January 2011:
In addtion, if we can apply CC BY-SA license for the articles which are aggregated on planet.o.o (2.1.1 in above list), the situation would be much better. Is there any good way to get those authors' consent?
The thing is, that a Blogpost is published on two places. The first is the original Post on the original Blog. The second publishing is the aggregated Post into planet.o.o. In this case i propose to publish the original Post under a free License.
Am 27/01/11 06:57, schrieb Satoru Matsumoto:
Sascha 'saigkill' Manns wrote:
Kostas Koudaras warlordfff@gmail.com wrote at Wednesday 26 January 2011:
- How should we deal with articles from external sites in OWN?
Alternatives may be:
We won't introduce articles from external sites anymore.
We will just introduce sites name, authors name, title and link
URL with short comment (For example: "In this article, the author explains how to ...") by editors.
Sascha can you please give further information about external sites? What I would like to know is if I write an article in my blog an blogspot am I an external site or you refer as external sites sites like Linux format and Softpedia?
From my POV all Sites who are outside *.opensuse.org are external. What helps is, if the Blogger license their work as CC. Then we can handle the Article better. So if you are an Blogger without an CC (or another free license) please put it on your Blogsite. Ideas you can get in http://saigkill.wordpress.com
To make things understandable, I'm going to categorize articles which we have in OWN now. # [copyright owner / license]
One of the important thing here is, that copyright and license are not the same thing. Only the copyright owner can decide which license to apply for its works.
- Internal articles
1.1. Articles on wiki.opensuse.org (including $LANG.o.o) [Novell, Inc. / GFDL 1.2] 1.2. Articles on *.opensuse.org (including {news,lizards,lists}.o.o) [Novell, Inc. / undefined (*1)]
- External articles
2.1. Personal blogs 2.1.1. Blogs which are aggregated on planet.o.o (except 1.2) [each author (*2) / various (*3)] 2.1.2. Blogs other than 2.1.1 [each author / various (*3)] 2.2. Articles on organozations' sites 2.2.1. Articles on FLOSS organizations or communities' sites (Linux.com, kde.org, TDF, ...) [each organization or community / various] 2.2.2. Articles on corporations' site (linux-magazine.com, h-online.com, ...) [each corporation / various (*4)]
*1 It is just mentioned "All rights reserved." *2 There's a description on the foot of planet.o.o: "© 2010 Pascal Bleser and the openSUSE Community.", though. *3 Often not defined clearly. *4 In most cases, "All rights reserved."
You can see, most of the articles are *not clearly permitted* to reprint, republish and modify.
We don't have any right to change the licenses of articles on external sites. But how about those on internal sites? That's why I wrote in the top post:
- Can we ask Novell to apply CC BY-SA 3.0 license for every content on *.opensuse.org including Wiki? If that'll be OK, most of the problems will be solved.
In addtion, if we can apply CC BY-SA license for the articles which are aggregated on planet.o.o (2.1.1 in above list), the situation would be much better. Is there any good way to get those authors' consent?
# This is the reason why I asked in the top post: "Do we need # Contributor License Agreement?"
Best,
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en "Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). " So you likely have to name the original authors, too (or maybe at least link to the history) - if the wiki would use CC.
In my (not payed or covered by an insurance..) opinion it would be great if the wiki pages would be licensed with a CC license. But the issue of switching to an other license is not an easy doing - if you are very cautious you have to assure that all the original authors are agreeing to that change.
Regards pistazienfresser
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
[snip]
@Sascha Please explain the reason why you think it is better to publish OWN under that license including:
- What kind of benefits can we expect by applying CC BY-SA 3.0 license?
- Why should we apply CC BY-SA 3.0 instead of other similar licenses?
<Explanation from Sascha>
[snip]
The GFDL which is used by openSUSE is a good License too. But it is needed to paste the whole License inside every new produce. If we're using CC then is a Link enough.
</Explanation from Sascha>
Do you know any information source for this? Do we really need to paste the whole GFDL license terms inside every new documents (in this case, every page on the Wiki)? That's hard to believe, and, if we have to do so, we are violating the license because we don't put the whole GFDL license terms on each wiki page now (ATM, only the terms "All content is made available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 ("GFDL") unless expressly indicated otherwise." are put on the bottom of each Wiki page).
However, even if we don't need to put the whole GFDL license terms on each wiki page, we need to put at least one copy of the whole GFDL license terms somewhere on the Wiki. But I can't find it now? Does anyone know where we can find it? If there isn't, we have to create the page for that.
BTW, "GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 ("GFDL")" in http://en.opensuse.org/Terms_of_site#Copyright_notice is now linked to 'GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.3' page. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt This may cause confusion and should be fixed. (I'm not permitted to edit this page.)
Best,
Hello Satoru, hello mates,
Satoru Matsumoto helios_reds@gmx.net wrote at Thursday 27 January 2011:
<Explanation from Sascha>
[snip]
The GFDL which is used by openSUSE is a good License too. But it is needed to paste the whole License inside every new produce. If we're using CC then is a Link enough.
</Explanation from Sascha>
Do you know any information source for this?
I've found it there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Comparison_of_GFDL_and_CC-BY-SA
Do we really need to paste the whole GFDL license terms inside every new documents (in this case, every page on the Wiki)? That's hard to believe, and, if we have to do so, we are violating the license because we don't put the whole GFDL license terms on each wiki page now (ATM, only the terms "All content is made available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 ("GFDL") unless expressly indicated otherwise." are put on the bottom of each Wiki page).
That i don't know exactly. But i think, that the Link on the bottom of the Page isn't enough.
However, even if we don't need to put the whole GFDL license terms on each wiki page, we need to put at least one copy of the whole GFDL license terms somewhere on the Wiki. But I can't find it now? Does anyone know where we can find it? If there isn't, we have to create the page for that.
BTW, "GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 ("GFDL")" in http://en.opensuse.org/Terms_of_site#Copyright_notice is now linked to 'GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.3' page. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt This may cause confusion and should be fixed. (I'm not permitted to edit this page.)
I've added Juergen Weigert to this Post. Maybe he can say more...
Am 27/01/11 07:33, schrieb Satoru Matsumoto:
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
[snip]
@Sascha Please explain the reason why you think it is better to publish OWN under that license including:
- What kind of benefits can we expect by applying CC BY-SA 3.0 license?
- Why should we apply CC BY-SA 3.0 instead of other similar licenses?
<Explanation from Sascha>
[snip]
The GFDL which is used by openSUSE is a good License too. But it is needed to paste the whole License inside every new produce. If we're using CC then is a Link enough.
</Explanation from Sascha>
Do you know any information source for this? Do we really need to paste the whole GFDL license terms inside every new documents (in this case, every page on the Wiki)? That's hard to believe, and, if we have to do so, we are violating the license because we don't put the whole GFDL license terms on each wiki page now (ATM, only the terms "All content is made available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 ("GFDL") unless expressly indicated otherwise." are put on the bottom of each Wiki page).
However, even if we don't need to put the whole GFDL license terms on each wiki page, we need to put at least one copy of the whole GFDL license terms somewhere on the Wiki. But I can't find it now? Does anyone know where we can find it? If there isn't, we have to create the page for that.
I think the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)is just a not very modern license for Open Content. If I remember it it was originally just a 'little sister' of the GNU General Public License for software made for man-pages and things like that that will be included with the software (and so including the text of the license was not a thing the creators of the license thought to be not-handy). And if I print an wikipedia article the text of the licenses are included.
The more valid objections against the GFDL in my mind are [1]:
- there is no real translation or adaption of the terms to an other language or to an other jurisdiction - especially the general exclusion of liability is according to German (and maybe also to all European) law 'to strong' and therefore most probably in hole not effective[2].
[1] See also: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFDL#Kritik [2] Compare to an equal exclusion of liability : [opensuse-wiki-de] Re: [opensuse-wiki] "Terms of site" for other languages http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-wiki-de/2010-08/msg00007.html
Regards pistazienfresser
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to?
I think this is the most important question here and should be clarified first. Without clarifying this, further discussions would be invalid.
<from Sascha>
In Germany we have the "Citiation Law", who says, that everyone can paste from every written document into a new one. But it can't be used for the whole document, just for a citiation (Maybe 3 Paragraphs or so...) Exists any similar Law in other Countries too?
</from Sascha>
I can't see the reason why we should refer to German law when we edit and publish OWN...
@Board
Please give us the answer, or tell us who can give us the answer.
we, openSUSE Weekly News (OWN) team are now facing license and copyright issues. There are some things which are not clear to us. Although most of the issues affect just OWN, I think those issues should be shared by whole project.
Sascha, editor in chief of OWN have proposed that we should publish OWN under CC BY-SA 3.0 license [1].
@Sascha Please explain the reason why you think it is better to publish OWN under that license including:
- What kind of benefits can we expect by applying CC BY-SA 3.0 license?
- Why should we apply CC BY-SA 3.0 instead of other similar licenses?
<Explanation from Sascha>
The CC BY-SA helps us to give a clear License with clear Restriction. If we publishing under CC BY-SA or another CC License everyone can use our Weekly News, write anything from his content, and republish it.
And BTW: Ubuntu and Fedora Newsletters are under CC BY-SA too.
BTW2: But this is set on the bottom of every Site inside the normal Site.
The GFDL which is used by openSUSE is a good License too. But it is needed to paste the whole License inside every new produce. If we're using CC then is a Link enough.
</Explanation from Sascha>
What are the points that are not yet clear enough? # Please do not confound copyright with license.
For contents on Wiki, license is clearly specified: "All content is made available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 ("GFDL") unless expressly indicated otherwise."[2] But how about contents on other *.opensuse.org sites?
Can we include contents, of which licenses aren't clearly mentioned, in OWN and publish under CC BY-SA 3.0 license? Or, should we "expressly indicate otherwise" the license of each article, even if the article is from news.o.o, lizards.o.o, lists.o.o and planet.o.o? (If we should do so, we have to "expressly indicate otherwise" the license of almost every article, because most of the articles now on OWN are from those sites or external news sites or private blogs. But if 90% of the contents are not under CC BY-SA or any other clear license, do we really need to publish OWN under that license?)
Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to?
<from Sascha>
In Germany we have the "Citiation Law", who says, that everyone can paste from every written document into a new one. But it can't be used for the whole document, just for a citiation (Maybe 3 Paragraphs or so...) Exists any similar Law in other Countries too?
</from Sascha>
- Can current drawing (citation) from external sites or personal blogs be considered "legitimate"? (This is closely related to the above question.)
As far as I refer to Japanese copyright law and guidelines, our current style doesn't meet the requirements for "legitimate quotation".
For example, if AuthorA wrote an article titled "About B" on SiteC that says "I love cats. In particular, I love kittens, because they are so cute! But some don't like cats." ...
-- Our current style: "SiteC/AutherA: About B" - "I love cats. In particular, I love kittens, because they are so cute! (...)" cannot be considered legitimate quotation. This style may be considered "reprint" and if there is a mention "all rights reserved" on the original SiteC, we are not allowed to reprint except otherwise specially permitted.
--- And this means, that we cannot "reprint" articles from *.opensuse.org except Wiki (contents on Wiki are published under GFDL), because we can read the mention "© 2010 Novell, Inc. All rights reserved." on the bottom of each page on those sites.
-- If we introduce the original article like: "SiteC/AutherA: About B"
- In this article, AuthorA is making out "I love cats. In
particular, I love kittens, because they are so cute! (...)". I totally agree. I think kitten is the most cutest animal on earth! -- this can be considered legitimate quotation.
# Therefore, Ubuntu people don't just "copy & paste" parts of articles from external sites in their Weekly News. When they introduce an article from external site, they are going to write an introductory article by themselves and include citation from original article in it.
- How can we solve these problems?
- Can we ask Novell to apply CC BY-SA 3.0 license for every content on *.opensuse.org including Wiki? If that'll be OK, most of the problems will be solved.
-- In that case, do we need Contributor License Agreement [3] to explain that all the contributed documents on *.opensuse.org will be published under CC BY-SA 3.0 license?
-- But still, how we can deal with articles which are aggregated on planet.o.o wouldn't that clear. Will all the authors accept that their articles will be published under CC BY-SA 3.0 license?
- How should we deal with articles from external sites in OWN? Alternatives may be:
We won't introduce articles from external sites anymore.
We will just introduce sites name, authors name, title and link URL with short comment (For example: "In this article, the author explains how to ...") by editors.
When we introduce an article from external site, editor will write an introductory article for that as Gertjan does for Forums section now. (I think this is the best option. But in order to do so, we need much more help.)
We need all those points to be clear. Suggestions and proposals are welcome.
[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/ [2] http://en.opensuse.org/Terms_of_site#Copyright_notice [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
Best,
Hello Satoru,
Satoru Matsumoto helios_reds@gmx.net wrote at Thursday 27 January 2011:
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to?
I think this is the most important question here and should be clarified first. Without clarifying this, further discussions would be invalid.
Yes, that i think too.
<from Sascha>
In Germany we have the "Citiation Law", who says, that everyone can paste from every written document into a new one. But it can't be used for the whole document, just for a citiation (Maybe 3 Paragraphs or so...) Exists any similar Law in other Countries too?
</from Sascha>
I can't see the reason why we should refer to German law when we edit and publish OWN...
Right. I've written this just to explain which situation in germany is. And i asked just if any other Countries have any similar Law.
Yesterday, this topic was discussed in -project meeting. http://community.opensuse.org/meetings/opensuse-project/2011/opensuse-projec...
I appreciate you, meeting participant, discussing this topic and I'm sorry I couldn't join the meeting.
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to?
I think this is the most important question here and should be clarified first. Without clarifying this, further discussions would be invalid.
Sorry if I have confused you. The 2 major issues which I want to clarify in this thread are:
1. License of the contents on *.opensuse.org sites 2. Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN?
===================================================================
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).
If I understand correctly, when someone wants to *re-use* the contents on those sites, she has to ask permission from Novell. And only the copyright owner (in this case, Novell) can decide which license to be applied.
This situation makes things complex.
We can re-use and modify contents on en.o.o according to the GFDL license. That's why we can translate the contents on en.o.o and put the translations on $LANG.o.o. The original articles on en.o.o are published under GFDL and the translations of those articles will be also published on $LANG.o.o under GFDL license - there's no problem at all.
But how about articles from news.o.o, lizards.o.o and lists.o.o? Can we re-use and translate them without permission of Novell? In addition, when we translate them for OWN Japanese edition and put them on ja.o.o (just for example ;-) ), do we need to 'expressly indicate the license for them otherwise'? (If we don't do so, all the contents on ja.o.o will be automatically considered to be published under GFDL license.)
I believe all the announcements from our project should be reached to as many people as possible regardless of whether the readers are good at reading English or not. And most of the authors of lizards.o.o also might hope their blog posts will be read by as many readers as possible. That's one of the biggest reasons why I translate OWN every week. The current situation - license of the contents on *.opensuse.org aren't defined - isn't good for me (and for those who want to translate OWN), at least.
2. Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN?
If the license issue above will be clarified, the situation will be better than now. But still, there are other problems.
ATM, we are introducing articles from external sites (personal blogs and sites by organizations) in OWN.
I know, basically we need to ask permissions from copyright owners of those articles each time we want to draw them for OWN, unless they are published under the licenses such as GFDL or CC BY-SA. But that will become strained for us OWN team.
However, most of the copyright laws contain exemptions, which allow us to draw (quote) others works legitimately under certain conditions. What are considered to 'legitimate citations' depends on each law and guideline.
So the question here is: which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN?
* The authors of original articles live in various countries. * The external sites are hosted in various countries. * (ATM,)we are using berlios.de for editing OWN. * OWN is published primarily on news.o.o. * PDF and Wiki versions of OWN are put on en.o.o. * Translated OWN are published on $LANG.o.o. * Greek editions are also published on http://own.opensuse.gr/ , which is run by Greek community (?) [1]. * Infrastructures for openSUSE project are owned and run by Novell, which exists in USA. * Editors of OWN live in various countries. * The current editor in chief (Sascha) lives in Germany. * Translators of OWN live in various countries (ATM, only ja and gr are active so that most of them live in Japan or Greece).
Now you might understand why this issue is so complex.
Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN, in case ...:
a. we publish English version of OWN on news.o.o ?
A. we should refer to the law and guideline of each original author or copyright owner. B. we should refer to the law and guideline of USA, because infrastructure of news.o.o is owned by Novell. C. we should refer to the law and guideline of Germany, because editor in chief lives in Germany.
b. we publish $LANG version of OWN on $LANG.o.o ? (to make things simple, let's imagine ja here)
A. we should refer to the law and guideline of each original author or copyright owner. B. we should refer to the law and guideline of USA, because infrastructure of $LANG.o.o is owned by Novell. C. we should refer to the law and guideline of Japan, because all the translators and most of the readers live in Japan.
c. we publish Greek version of OWN on own.opensuse.gr ?
A. we should refer to the law and guideline of each original author or copyright owner. B. we should refer to the law and guideline of USA, because the original OWN which are the base of Greek translations are on news.o.o. C. we should refer to the law and guideline of Greece, because the site for publishing Greek version is run by Greek organization and all the translators and most of the readers live in Greece.
If the answer for every situation would be A, we have to give up drawing contents from external sites because it is almost impossible to refer to laws and guidelines of all over the world or ask permissions from copyright owners each time. :-(
But if the answers would be B or C, we just need to refer to the corresponding laws and guidelines. That will make our work much more compliant.
[1] This is yet another topic, though. When I search the registrar of opensuse.gr at https://grweb.ics.forth.gr/Whois?lang=en , I could see 'Registrar Referral URL:http://www.papaki.gr'. So, the domain opensuse.gr doesn't seem to be owned by Novell. But according to our trademark guidelines: 'If you want to include all or part of an openSUSE Mark in a domain name, you should seek our permission (see "Contact Information" below to request permission). (...) By "domain name" we mean to refer to toplevel domains and second-level domains, but not sub-domains.' http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Trademark_Guidelines#Domain_Names
I have a little concern, whether Greek community is permitted to use this domain name by Novell or not. If not yet, I recommend you to ask permission from Novell. ;-)
Best,
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN, in case ...:
[snip]
c. we publish Greek version of OWN on own.opensuse.gr ?
A. we should refer to the law and guideline of each original author or copyright owner. B. we should refer to the law and guideline of USA, because the original OWN which are the base of Greek translations are on news.o.o. C. we should refer to the law and guideline of Greece, because the site for publishing Greek version is run by Greek organization and all the translators and most of the readers live in Greece.
If I understand correctly, this might be deeply related why Sascha thought German version of OWN should be moved to open-slx site.
He may have thought the answer for this situation would be C.
If German translators just need to refer to German law and guideline in case the German version of OWN would be published on the site which is run by German organization, the situation would be much easier, because German translators might be much more familiar with German law and guideline than which of USA. (I know, whether the site which owned by open-slx is the best place for that or not is yet another question, though.)
Best,
Hi Satoru,
Satoru Matsumoto helios_reds@gmx.net wrote at Thursday 10 February 2011:
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we
want to draw contents from external sites for OWN, in case ...:
[snip]
c. we publish Greek version of OWN on own.opensuse.gr ?
A. we should refer to the law and guideline of each original author or
copyright owner.B. we should refer to the law and guideline of USA, because the
original OWN which are the base of Greek translations are on news.o.o.C. we should refer to the law and guideline of Greece, because the
site for publishing Greek version is run by Greek organization and all the translators and most of the readers live in Greece.If I understand correctly, this might be deeply related why Sascha thought German version of OWN should be moved to open-slx site.
He may have thought the answer for this situation would be C.
If German translators just need to refer to German law and guideline in case the German version of OWN would be published on the site which is run by German organization, the situation would be much easier, because German translators might be much more familiar with German law and guideline than which of USA. (I know, whether the site which owned by open-slx is the best place for that or not is yet another question, though.)
This cituation is a little bit different. The english OWN is for the whole Community. The german Newsletter who i'm hosting by open-slx is called "openSUSE Wochenrückblick" and is a Product of open-slx for Endusers. Because we just using the Link and comment it in own words, the whole Newsletter is owned by the Newsteam of open-slx. That's why we changed to CC-BY-SA.
Hi Sascha,
Sascha Manns wrote:
Hi Satoru,
Satoru Matsumoto helios_reds@gmx.net wrote at Thursday 10 February 2011:
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we
want to draw contents from external sites for OWN, in case ...:
[snip]
c. we publish Greek version of OWN on own.opensuse.gr ?
A. we should refer to the law and guideline of each original author or
copyright owner.B. we should refer to the law and guideline of USA, because the
original OWN which are the base of Greek translations are on news.o.o.C. we should refer to the law and guideline of Greece, because the
site for publishing Greek version is run by Greek organization and all the translators and most of the readers live in Greece.If I understand correctly, this might be deeply related why Sascha thought German version of OWN should be moved to open-slx site.
He may have thought the answer for this situation would be C.
If German translators just need to refer to German law and guideline in case the German version of OWN would be published on the site which is run by German organization, the situation would be much easier, because German translators might be much more familiar with German law and guideline than which of USA. (I know, whether the site which owned by open-slx is the best place for that or not is yet another question, though.)
This cituation is a little bit different. The english OWN is for the whole Community. The german Newsletter who i'm hosting by open-slx is called "openSUSE Wochenrückblick" and is a Product of open-slx for Endusers. Because we just using the Link and comment it in own words, the whole Newsletter is owned by the Newsteam of open-slx. That's why we changed to CC-BY-SA.
Hmmm, this may cause another problematic matter which is related to the topic discussed in Board meeting yesterday.
If the new German newsletter is published as a product of open-slx for German end users under the name of 'open-slx Wochenrückblick', there might be no problem (even if the name is 'open-slx Wochenrückblick', I think you can still include openSUSE related articles in it).
But as far as the newsletter is a product of open-slx and the name includes 'openSUSE', that may become source of trouble. People may easily misunderstand that the newsletter is officially published by openSUSE project, even though neither openSUSE project nor Novell has right to control it.
If you, as an individual or a part of open-slx, think the much more polished and specialized newsletter for German openSUSE end users is needed instead of just a translation of English OWN, you can create it as you like. That's cool and of course you have the right and freedom to do so.
However, if you think you are a part of openSUSE project/community, I hope you will do so as a part of openSUSE, not as a part of open-slx. Have you discussed this topic enough on -de list or de forums already? Do most of the people in German community think this is the best (or at least, the better) solution? If the answer is yes, I don't have a right to object.
But still, if you find some problems which stand in the way of improving our Geeko, I want to you to point out and share the problems so that we can work together in finding solutions. Even if you think that those problems cannot be solved by openSUSE project and the only solution for them is splitting off from openSUSE, talking to the other people in our community first might be always a better option than making a rash decision.
I really wish you can understand what I mean.
Best,
On Thursday, February 10, 2011 10:44:01 Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
If you, as an individual or a part of open-slx, think the much more polished and specialized newsletter for German openSUSE end users is needed instead of just a translation of English OWN, you can create it as you like. That's cool and of course you have the right and freedom to do so.
However, if you think you are a part of openSUSE project/community, I hope you will do so as a part of openSUSE, not as a part of open-slx. Have you discussed this topic enough on -de list or de forums already? Do most of the people in German community think this is the best (or at least, the better) solution? If the answer is yes, I don't have a right to object.
It is entirely Sascha's prerogative, anyway.
Two things are important here:
- trademark, is Sascha allowed to publish an "openSUSE Wochenrückblick"? This assumes that there is clarity how to use the trademark, and then if he does use the openSUSE trademark correctly. Now my understanding is that the trademark situation is being sorted out, but that there is no clear trademark policy yet. As Sascha does indeed refer to openSUSE as product and community, and doesn't use the name for anything else, that's completely fine for all I know about trademark law.
- copyright, does Sascha have the right to publish content. As you say, it's originary content, written by himself. He owns the copyright, he decides what to do about this, and who publishes it. (Note that he put it under a very friendly license, so the content is actually easily reusable for others.
Now Sascha decides to contribute to both, the englisch openSUSE newsletter, and a German one, for another medium. In my books, there's nothing wrong with it, the fact that Sascha does, and has been doing important work for the openSUSE newsletter does not automatically mandate that he has to do the exact same for other projects he works on. In fact, I think this exclusive attitide is very dangerous, because it has this distinct all-or-nothing feeling to it.
Let me share my personal view on this, though. If Sascha decides to move part of the content to another site, you can do 2 things:
1) try to get him to roll back 2) try to understand why he made this decision
The first option might sound appealing, and like the logical thing to do, the second one is the one that gives you a handle how things need to be improved.
I've been trying to get more involved with the openSUSE community lately, but one of the biggest barriers I encountered was a lack of "getting things done" mentality. It seems as though for many things one wants to do with openSUSE, many people want to be involved. The problem is that many of those are merely claiming that they should be involved to be able to participate in discussions. It smells a bit like "if someone does something, I want to tell her why". This very much kills any sense of creating something exciting. I think this attitude of gatekeeping is even at the very heard why openSUSE is lacking direction, and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. The more this gatekeeper attitude is exercised, the more people are being pushed away. Ironically, this way of acting supports the very same attitude people are complaining about. The overhead of having to discuss anything with anybody is so high, that it will eventually kill any spark of new ideas. So if you want these to survive, I'd recommend only talking to people that are
a) willing to chip in b) ignore those that tell them "my way or the highway"
It's sad to say, but the amount of stop energy when doing something differently or new does a lot of harm to the project, the result is:
1) people with ideas are driven away 2) people with new ideas aren't attracted to begin with 3) many cool things simply do not happen
...and then you end up with the status quo.
Le jeudi 10 février 2011, à 12:54 +0100, Sebastian Kügler a écrit :
- trademark, is Sascha allowed to publish an "openSUSE Wochenrückblick"? This
assumes that there is clarity how to use the trademark, and then if he does use the openSUSE trademark correctly. Now my understanding is that the trademark situation is being sorted out, but that there is no clear trademark policy yet.
Just to clarify, we do have clear guidelines already: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Trademark_guidelines
But there's work going on to update those guidelines.
Vincent
Hey,
On 02/10/2011 12:54 PM, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
On Thursday, February 10, 2011 10:44:01 Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
However, if you think you are a part of openSUSE project/community, I hope you will do so as a part of openSUSE, not as a part of open-slx. Have you discussed this topic enough on -de list or de forums already? Do most of the people in German community think this is the best (or at least, the better) solution? If the answer is yes, I don't have a right to object.
It is entirely Sascha's prerogative, anyway.
Sure, as its the right of everybody else to object how Sascha does it :)
Two things are important here:
- trademark, is Sascha allowed to publish an "openSUSE Wochenrückblick"? This
assumes that there is clarity how to use the trademark, and then if he does use the openSUSE trademark correctly. Now my understanding is that the trademark situation is being sorted out, but that there is no clear trademark policy yet.
There are trademark guidelines in effect now. You can read them at
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Trademark_guidelines
Let me share my personal view on this, though.
[...]
It's sad to say, but the amount of stop energy when doing something differently or new does a lot of harm to the project
And everybody agrees with that in general. However this isn't the issue everybody has with this move.
People tell you that they don't like Sascha or anyone else to push things into open-slx.de infrastructure and away from opensuse.org infrastructure. You never once address this specific concern in any way, you simply ignore it. Until you somehow address this issue either with talking about it or doing something about it, you will continue to receive criticisms.
Henne
On Thursday, February 10, 2011 14:58:37 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Let me share my personal view on this, though.
It's sad to say, but the amount of stop energy when doing something differently or new does a lot of harm to the project
And everybody agrees with that in general. However this isn't the issue everybody has with this move.
People tell you that they don't like Sascha or anyone else to push things into open-slx.de infrastructure and away from opensuse.org infrastructure. You never once address this specific concern in any way, you simply ignore it. Until you somehow address this issue either with talking about it or doing something about it, you will continue to receive criticisms.
Simple fact, if moving stuff onto opensuse.org is the easiest and most promising way to get things done, we'd probably do it. Unfortunately, it's not, and that's a big problem because it shows that it's not very attractive to build inside openSUSE infra. This kind of discussions is part of the cause for this. If I'm bogged down with endless discussions over anything I want to get done (which I'm afraid is fairly common), I avoid it to get on with my life and concentrate on working with those that show a reasonable ratio of talk vs. do. In this particular case, basic economics suggest that even with the amount of pushback we receive especially from you, way easier to build on infrastructure you do not excert direct control on, than it would be to do things a exactly as you would like.
The point really is that doing things differently actually means change in some ways, which often leads to objection. Sometimes that's valuable, sometimes less so, in any event it's normal and to be expected. One good way to find out is to just do it. Sometimes that means to not follow others advice, and that's just fine. If I personally invest time and energy into something, I also earn the right to do it in the way I think is right.
I'm not ignoring your concerns, by the way. I listened and came to the conclusion that things will work better differently, and that working and doing things according to the people who contribute more positive energy is a better investment of my time and passion. Call it agree to disagree, but we're at least entitled to the benefit of the doubt -- otherwise you kill off anything which might present an opportunity for the openSUSE community to become an exciting project again, something which the board has not yet succeeded in. If you think that something should be differently, do it differently, but don't try to tell others what they have to do. That's both unrealistic and not how community participation works -- and I'm sure I don't have to tell you that.
Good leadership is not about control, it's also providing a common ground for people to build upon, letting things grow by themselves, and handing tools to those that show promise. I'm fully convinced that your (as the openSUSE board) intentions are positive, I'm just experiencing an effect that's the opposite of what's intended. You also need to ask yourself if it's your mandate to play gatekeeper in this way. In my understanding you are overstepping this mandate, but I'm happy to leave this discussion aside, as it's been gone over in great detail when discussing banning a contributor from the openSUSE community not long ago.
Hi,
On 02/10/2011 03:46 PM, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
On Thursday, February 10, 2011 14:58:37 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Let me share my personal view on this, though.
It's sad to say, but the amount of stop energy when doing something differently or new does a lot of harm to the project
And everybody agrees with that in general. However this isn't the issue everybody has with this move.
People tell you that they don't like Sascha or anyone else to push things into open-slx.de infrastructure and away from opensuse.org infrastructure.
Simple fact, if moving stuff onto opensuse.org is the easiest and most promising way to get things done, we'd probably do it.
Okay so why does Sascha never raise what he needs to have to do the "openSUSE Wochenrückblick" on de.opensuse.org or some other place?
Henne
Henne Vogelsang hvogel@opensuse.org wrote at Thursday 10 February 2011:
Hi,
On 02/10/2011 03:46 PM, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
On Thursday, February 10, 2011 14:58:37 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Let me share my personal view on this, though.
It's sad to say, but the amount of stop energy when doing something differently or new does a lot of harm to the project
And everybody agrees with that in general. However this isn't the issue everybody has with this move.
People tell you that they don't like Sascha or anyone else to push things into open-slx.de infrastructure and away from opensuse.org infrastructure.
Simple fact, if moving stuff onto opensuse.org is the easiest and most promising way to get things done, we'd probably do it.
Okay so why does Sascha never raise what he needs to have to do the "openSUSE Wochenrückblick" on de.opensuse.org or some other place?
The team who has done the german weekly news don't want to contribute there anymore. Just ask Linuxsusefan as example...
Hey,
On 02/10/2011 04:50 PM, Sascha Manns wrote:
Henne Vogelsang hvogel@opensuse.org wrote at Thursday 10 February
On 02/10/2011 03:46 PM, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
On Thursday, February 10, 2011 14:58:37 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Let me share my personal view on this, though.
It's sad to say, but the amount of stop energy when doing something differently or new does a lot of harm to the project
And everybody agrees with that in general. However this isn't the issue everybody has with this move.
People tell you that they don't like Sascha or anyone else to push things into open-slx.de infrastructure and away from opensuse.org infrastructure.
Simple fact, if moving stuff onto opensuse.org is the easiest and most promising way to get things done, we'd probably do it.
Okay so why does Sascha never raise what he needs to have to do the "openSUSE Wochenrückblick" on de.opensuse.org or some other place?
The team who has done the german weekly news don't want to contribute there anymore.
Please enlighten everybody and tell us why. Talk to us, work with us, as a team. I contributed to the wiki portion of the Weekly News didn't I? I also contributed to the German wiki. I helped you countless times with a lot of issues. I also helped Linuxsusefan. If nothing else you owe me an explanation _why_ you pull out. Really, we're friends aren't we?
Henne
Salut Henne,
Henne Vogelsang hvogel@opensuse.org wrote at Thursday 10 February 2011:
The team who has done the german weekly news don't want to contribute there anymore.
Please enlighten everybody and tell us why. Talk to us, work with us, as a team. I contributed to the wiki portion of the Weekly News didn't I? I also contributed to the German wiki. I helped you countless times with a lot of issues. I also helped Linuxsusefan. If nothing else you owe me an explanation _why_ you pull out. Really, we're friends aren't we?
Please dont be angry. I would like to clarify some things: You know, the SUSE Distribution was a german Project, with german Handbooks, german Support and support for a german Community. You Guys has worked hard and good to make things better for the German Customers. You've selled the Box and all was ok. After the sell of SUSE to Novell the new prefered Language was english. But one of the important things who was forgotten by you is, that the german Community makes one of the biggest pieces from the cake, that you eat. Look into the dewiki.opensuse.org. How many good Articles for german users you find there? Or look in de.opensuse.org. How many actual Articles are there? Many Articles are simply outdated. And this all gives me the sign that SUSE Germany isn't very interested into building and growing a german Community. Now looks to wiki.open-slx.de. We have 1552 Articles there. In the german Language, all Articles handselected and partly rewritten for openSUSE needs. All Articles are tested before publishing. And the whole Project was driven by a handfull People in some month. So i can say, that we haven't a fork or anything like that. We just closed the hole in your market. And you know we have open free market. We just give a good Base for german Users to get this thing who are missed by others. Point Communication. AFAIK not just i or open-slx or any other does things without external communication. Coolo never has asked me when the next Release 12.0 will be planned. No one asked me, which flys will be paid by Jos for the Project. No one has given me a copy of the SUSE Germany Bilance. I guess that some of you just entusiastic because that's their job. Everyone must eat, sleep, drink and buy a new Computer ;-) But everyone is replaceable. What if Human resources says, that 5 Jobs of openSUSE/SUSE will be killed? So long you are employed your living the politic of the boss. I know some of ex employees, who not contributing the openSUSE Community. Everyone of us have things who are not discussed. Point Place. Why we are changed? Why a new place? The question is deeper then you thought. * opensuse-education * opensuse-guide * opensuse-lernen * opensuse-forums * linux-club
All these places are not hosted by Novell/SUSE. Some Sites are using a Trademark (Geeko). Would you like to force them to migrate their content to *.opensuse.org? Yes, that would be better but not practicable. then we can kill all other Linux Distributions and working on World Domination. The Opensource Scene lives from different flavors. You like open-slx not. I like it. I like opensuse-education too, you maybe too. Where will be the Borderline?
I decided to work for open-slx because i'm feeling good there. I'm knowing the most ppl in person. And i like Inyoka. One Syntax for Forum, Wiki and News. Who will be against that? And one of the important things why i'm working for open-slx is to support the german community.
We decided to make the openSUSE Wochenrückblick in the german Language on open-slx. If anyone would like to make an german Newsletter, then just start. All Templates are online.
So i think we a partners no enemies.
Le 10/02/2011 19:56, Sascha Manns a écrit :
You know, the SUSE Distribution was a german Project, with german Handbooks, german Support and support for a german Community.
not only that ATM there was also a French full support (good old times :-)
After the sell of SUSE to Novell the new prefered Language was english.
you can't say that. at the time Novell buy SuSE, Internet become popular and most people exchange with internet in english.
I'm completely unable to read german (and sometime ago I desparately tried without success :-(), but a SuSE upporter since 1997!!
Point Place. Why we are changed? Why a new place? The question is deeper then you thought.
your comments didn't make any thing clearer. Why couldn't you use the openSUSE infrastructure? you speak of Novell, but I guess most openSUSE servers are in Nuremberg :-)
it's not a matter of *forcing* anybody to anything; simply it's better to have all under the same cover, when possible.
I decided to work for open-slx because...
I just looked at open-slx, it's only advertised as a commercial suse vendor. You should revise your main page :-)
by the way I don't remember somebody asking the community to let open-slx sell the box (not that it be a problem for me)
i'm feeling good there. I'm
knowing the most ppl in person.
this is a very good reason, let the other alone :-))
So i think we a partners no enemies.
still I beg we would like to know why you quit, what did we do bad that you didn't feel right here (or may be I didn't understand the problem)
keep cool :-)
jdd
Am Donnerstag, den 10.02.2011, 19:56 +0100 schrieb Sascha Manns:
Now looks to wiki.open-slx.de. We have 1552 Articles there. In the german Language, all Articles handselected and partly rewritten for openSUSE needs. All Articles are tested before publishing. And the whole Project was driven by a handfull People in some month. So i can say, that we haven't a fork or anything like that. We just closed the hole in your market. And you know we have open free market. We just give a good Base for german Users to get this thing who are missed by others.
Excellent, a praised handful heroish people have identified a problem, and instead of fixing it in place, they decided to workaround by reinventing the wheel somewhere else with the outcome of even more separation.
Now this is the holy grail which will makes things much better :(
Holger
Hey,
On 02/10/2011 07:56 PM, Sascha Manns wrote:
Henne Vogelsang hvogel@opensuse.org wrote at Thursday 10 February 2011:
The team who has done the german weekly news don't want to contribute there anymore.
Please enlighten everybody and tell us why.
Please dont be angry.
Sascha, I am not angry. I want to understand why you do the things you do. And for my understanding I asked you a straight forward question and I "demand" a straight answer from you.
I don't want a market analysis of the German openSUSE market. We can talk and do something about this _together_ somewhere else.
I want to know one thing. You can do all the great things you do, for all the very well thought out reasons you have, inside the openSUSE project, on openSUSE infrastructure with openSUSE branding. Why don't you?
Henne
Hi Henne,
Henne Vogelsang hvogel@opensuse.org wrote at Friday 11 February 2011:
Hey,
On 02/10/2011 07:56 PM, Sascha Manns wrote:
Henne Vogelsang hvogel@opensuse.org wrote at Thursday 10 February
2011:
The team who has done the german weekly news don't want to contribute there anymore.
Please enlighten everybody and tell us why.
Please dont be angry.
Sascha, I am not angry. I want to understand why you do the things you do. And for my understanding I asked you a straight forward question and I "demand" a straight answer from you.
I don't want a market analysis of the German openSUSE market. We can talk and do something about this _together_ somewhere else.
I want to know one thing. You can do all the great things you do, for all the very well thought out reasons you have, inside the openSUSE project, on openSUSE infrastructure with openSUSE branding. Why don't you?
Why you're blogging in http://blog.hennevogel.de/ instead of lizards?
On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 19:42:17 +0100, Sascha Manns wrote:
I want to know one thing. You can do all the great things you do, for all the very well thought out reasons you have, inside the openSUSE project, on openSUSE infrastructure with openSUSE branding. Why don't you?
Why you're blogging in http://blog.hennevogel.de/ instead of lizards?
Where any individual blogs isn't the question, Sascha - that's very different from creating an entire portal that in effect chops up the community into smaller pieces, duplicates efforts, and adds complexity where it doesn't necessarily need to be.
I have some concerns about this myself - and I know Rupert knows my concerns because I've talked about him in the context of the open-slx community portal's forums that are being set up.
As a member of staff in the openSUSE forums, I've been concerned about this duplication of efforts - for example, in OSF, we provide a German set of forums. There's also other German forums (linuxclub.de is one I know about), so I have to seriously wonder what benefit there is to creating yet another German set of forums on the open-slx portal. Doing so divides the expertise and makes it more difficult for people looking for help to decide where to go.
That would seem to me (from my vantage point) to create unnecessary complexity and further divide a community we should ALL be working to unite rather than to further fragment.
Reducing duplication was one of the drivers (as I understand it) behind merging several different sets of forums that provided assistance to users using openSUSE.
Looking at the Fedora community or the Ubuntu community, for example, they each seem to have a single set of forums, which provides them both with a higher degree of community cohesion. I don't think I've ever seen anyone ask the question "which forums should I go to if I have questions about [Ubuntu|Fedora]?" (This doesn't mean there aren't third-party forums, but I have never, ever seen a reference to a post in a third- party Ubuntu forum, for example)
But I could certainly see that happening here if the community doesn't come together to provide that (ideally) single place to go for information and interaction.
open-slx has done some great things for the openSUSE project, but like Henne, I have a really hard time understanding why all this duplicate effort is taking place rather than leveraging the existing infrastructure as much as possible, and answering that question with "why don't you blog on lizards.opensuse.org?" doesn't really address the underlying issue or concern. It is, as Henne said, a pretty straightforward question, and either the answer is straightforward or it isn't.
If the answer isn't straightforward, then I would ask that rather than answering the question with another question, you just say "it isn't that simple" - or better yet - trust that we can discuss the issue in an intelligent way (and don't worry about the complexity, after all, the project members and board deal with a high degree of complexity in a lot of different ways) and come to a resolution that everyone benefits from.
Jim
Hi Jim,
Jim Henderson hendersj@gmail.com wrote at Friday 11 February 2011:
On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 19:42:17 +0100, Sascha Manns wrote:
I want to know one thing. You can do all the great things you do, for all the very well thought out reasons you have, inside the openSUSE project, on openSUSE infrastructure with openSUSE branding. Why don't you?
Why you're blogging in http://blog.hennevogel.de/ instead of lizards?
Where any individual blogs isn't the question, Sascha - that's very different from creating an entire portal that in effect chops up the community into smaller pieces, duplicates efforts, and adds complexity where it doesn't necessarily need to be.
The basic Question from Henne was, why we're making the german Newsletter into a new place. The answer is the same like anyone (maybe Henne) decided to publish his stuff not in lizards. Anyone can choose what is the best for any contribution. In the Newsletter case it is a very big plus for open-slx, that i can set as copyrightowner a CC License. In the official Infrastructure i give up my rights to Novell and can't choose my prefered License.
The Question about why an new Platform, i don't answer. If you have talked with Rupert, then you know the answer. And no more discussion of this point is needed.
Le samedi 12 février 2011, à 01:21 +0100, Sascha Manns a écrit :
In the Newsletter case it is a very big plus for open-slx, that i can set as copyrightowner a CC License.
Quoting http://en.opensuse.org/Legal:
"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."
Let me stress out the last part: "unless expressly otherwise indicated".
It means you can use a CC license if you expressly indicate it.
In the official Infrastructure i give up my rights to Novell and can't choose my prefered License.
I don't think you give your rights to Novell -- if it's true, then we need to fix it. But the legal page explicitly states: "Under these Terms Novell does not claim ownership of content or Software you submit or make available for inclusion on this website."
And as mentioned above, you can choose the license that works best for you.
Is there any other concern you have with hosting the german newsletter on the openSUSE infrastructure?
Thanks,
Vincent
Vincent Untz vuntz@opensuse.org wrote at Saturday 12 February 2011:
Le samedi 12 février 2011, à 01:21 +0100, Sascha Manns a écrit :
In the Newsletter case it is a very big plus for open-slx, that i can set as copyrightowner a CC License.
Quoting http://en.opensuse.org/Legal:
"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."
Let me stress out the last part: "unless expressly otherwise indicated".
It means you can use a CC license if you expressly indicate it.
In the official Infrastructure i give up my rights to Novell and can't choose my prefered License.
I don't think you give your rights to Novell -- if it's true, then we need to fix it. But the legal page explicitly states: "Under these Terms Novell does not claim ownership of content or Software you submit or make available for inclusion on this website."
And as mentioned above, you can choose the license that works best for you.
Is there any other concern you have with hosting the german newsletter on the openSUSE infrastructure?
The Team has decided to givup the german Newsletter (http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-wiki-de/2010-12/msg00004.html). I wasn't a member of the german translation team. I just decided to wake up a similar Newsletter.
Which Infrastructure we're using is irrelevant. The open-slx Base is for german Users and a german Newsletter is a good place too.
Otherwise we can ask why Packman the Packages not hosts in our Build Service? Imagine that we have some Packages as double. We importing the stuff from Packman and use this Packages in our BuildService. Most this Action runs for building important Depencies, that can't solved by our Build Service.
So i think that importing the whole stuff is a better solution. We don't need more Package bases.
On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 01:56:21 +0100, Sascha Manns wrote:
The Team has decided to givup the german Newsletter (http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-wiki-de/2010-12/msg00004.html). I wasn't a member of the german translation team. I just decided to wake up a similar Newsletter.
Which Infrastructure we're using is irrelevant. The open-slx Base is for german Users and a german Newsletter is a good place too.
The infrastructure you're using is important. The open-slx Platform divides the community by providing multiple places for German users to go to access information. I mentioned with the forums, there's German forums on OSF, there's linuxclub.de - so how does adding yet another set of German forums benefit the German community? How does adding another German portal (let's not forget that there are already German resources on opensuse.org as well) with a separate wiki, communications infrastructure, etc, etc, etc help *unify* the German community?
Nobody's debating that addressing the needs of the German community is important. The question, ultimately, is does it make sense to address the needs of the German community through multiple venues?
Otherwise we can ask why Packman the Packages not hosts in our Build Service? Imagine that we have some Packages as double. We importing the stuff from Packman and use this Packages in our BuildService. Most this Action runs for building important Depencies, that can't solved by our Build Service.
So i think that importing the whole stuff is a better solution. We don't need more Package bases.
Sure, but that's a side issue to this. Let's talk about what open-slx has control over, since that's the current issue. It doesn't help the issue by saying "well, someone else is doing their own thing as well", and then use that as justification.
You raise some new and relevant questions in bringing up Packman, but of course that's a different discussion and not even related to what we're talking about with the German community being split up further than it already is. It's not really a valid defense (not that I want you to feel you have to be "on defense" here) to, in response to a question about "what benefit is it to further segment the German community" by saying "it already is". Further division isn't a *good* thing, and pointing to the fact that it already is divided really isn't valid justification for *further* dividing the community. Does that make sense?
I would ask that you please stop trying to divert those questions and just focus on the topic at hand. Doing that makes it difficult to have a discussion about the open-slx piece of the puzzle.
Jim
Jim Henderson hendersj@gmail.com wrote at Saturday 12 February 2011:
On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 01:56:21 +0100, Sascha Manns wrote:
The Team has decided to givup the german Newsletter (http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-wiki-de/2010-12/msg00004.html). I wasn't a member of the german translation team. I just decided to wake up a similar Newsletter.
Which Infrastructure we're using is irrelevant. The open-slx Base is for german Users and a german Newsletter is a good place too.
The infrastructure you're using is important. The open-slx Platform divides the community by providing multiple places for German users to go to access information. I mentioned with the forums, there's German forums on OSF, there's linuxclub.de - so how does adding yet another set of German forums benefit the German community? How does adding another German portal (let's not forget that there are already German resources on opensuse.org as well) with a separate wiki, communications infrastructure, etc, etc, etc help *unify* the German community?
Nobody's debating that addressing the needs of the German community is important. The question, ultimately, is does it make sense to address the needs of the German community through multiple venues?
Otherwise we can ask why Packman the Packages not hosts in our Build Service? Imagine that we have some Packages as double. We importing the stuff from Packman and use this Packages in our BuildService. Most this Action runs for building important Depencies, that can't solved by our Build Service.
So i think that importing the whole stuff is a better solution. We don't need more Package bases.
Sure, but that's a side issue to this. Let's talk about what open-slx has control over, since that's the current issue. It doesn't help the issue by saying "well, someone else is doing their own thing as well", and then use that as justification.
You raise some new and relevant questions in bringing up Packman, but of course that's a different discussion and not even related to what we're talking about with the German community being split up further than it already is. It's not really a valid defense (not that I want you to feel you have to be "on defense" here) to, in response to a question about "what benefit is it to further segment the German community" by saying "it already is". Further division isn't a *good* thing, and pointing to the fact that it already is divided really isn't valid justification for *further* dividing the community. Does that make sense?
I would ask that you please stop trying to divert those questions and just focus on the topic at hand. Doing that makes it difficult to have a discussion about the open-slx piece of the puzzle.
If you want to talk about open-slx we have official Persons: * Stefan.Werden@open-slx.de * rhorstkoetter@open-slx.de
Thats all ;-)
Hi Sascha and mates,
Sascha Manns wrote:
Jim Henderson hendersj@gmail.com wrote at Saturday 12 February 2011:
On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 01:56:21 +0100, Sascha Manns wrote:
The Team has decided to givup the german Newsletter (http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-wiki-de/2010-12/msg00004.html). I wasn't a member of the german translation team. I just decided to wake up a similar Newsletter.
Which Infrastructure we're using is irrelevant. The open-slx Base is for german Users and a german Newsletter is a good place too.
I have wanted to talk about the role of translations of OWN in another thread on -marketing list. http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-marketing/2011-01/msg00276.html But unfortunately, only few were involved in that discussion.
I think the most important role of translation of OWN is to inform openSUSE-related important information which everyone should know to those who are not good at reading English.
For that purpose, we can always say "it's better than nothing".
In this case, just focusing how German OWN should be, I also have to say "it's better than nothing".
It's easy to say "you should publish German OWN on current openSUSE infrastructure". But if someone tells (or ask) Sascha to do so, (s)he should be responsible to help to do so at the same time. If no one except Sascha step forward to translate OWN into German, only Sascha can decide which way is the best. Just saying "although I won't do, you should do!" won't motivate others.
But still, I really wish Sascha (and other open-slx guys) will choose the way where WE can collaborate ALL TOGETHER, instead of the way of open-slx's own.
When you say 'We', I hope that means 'you and me, including open-slx guys, other openSUSE community guys and all the people who loves our Geeko' rather than 'just me and other open-slx guys' - that's my honest wish. ;-)
Best,
On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 16:31:48 +0900, Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
It's easy to say "you should publish German OWN on current openSUSE infrastructure". But if someone tells (or ask) Sascha to do so, (s)he should be responsible to help to do so at the same time. If no one except Sascha step forward to translate OWN into German, only Sascha can decide which way is the best. Just saying "although I won't do, you should do!" won't motivate others.
For my own part, I'm not saying "although I won't do it, you should do it this way" - I'm talking about a larger problem, namely the fragmentation of the community.
Now, I'm not in a position to translate OWN to German (as I don't speak German), but I do contribute in my own way (ie, as a member of staff on the openSUSE Forums).
But the underlying issue here isn't the publication of OWN through open- slx rather than openSUSE, but rather the fragmentation of the community through the creation of yet another openSUSE Portal for German community members.
And as such, my involvement in community *unity* is hardly a passive role.
Jim
On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 01:21:15 +0100, Sascha Manns wrote:
The basic Question from Henne was, why we're making the german Newsletter into a new place. The answer is the same like anyone (maybe Henne) decided to publish his stuff not in lizards. Anyone can choose what is the best for any contribution. In the Newsletter case it is a very big plus for open-slx, that i can set as copyrightowner a CC License.
But part of this discussion (and the root of it from what I've read) is about the opensuse.org site licensing under CC rather than GFDL - and I'd agree with Vincent, that if there is a "requirement" to give up your rights to content you create (rather than content you consume for redistribution, which again, was my read of what this issue was all about), then that's something that should be addressed in and of itself.
In the official Infrastructure i give up my rights to Novell and can't choose my prefered License.
So to clarify, are you not asking those who contribute to the opensuse.org site to give up their preferred license to be included in your edition of OWN? How is that different?
The Question about why an new Platform, i don't answer. If you have talked with Rupert, then you know the answer. And no more discussion of this point is needed.
I raise the point because the issue you raise is part of a bigger issue, which is why a separate platform that divides the community rather than working with the community and existing infrastructure?
I don't claim to fully understand the issues or even the outcome of my own discussions with Rupert (because that is, I think, an ongoing discussion).
It seems it would be in both the openSUSE project's best interests and in open-slx's best interests to work to unify the community. There is a difference between Henne writing a personal blog and the distribution of your newsletter (as I see it) consumes content from opensuse.org sources.
Henne's blog, OTOH, is his own thoughts on things. That (again in my view) is something entirely different from what you're doing with OWN. OWN is a representation of something official from the community (an aggregation of relevant news). Henne's blog (as far as I know) isn't positioned as such so the two aren't easily equatable. There's a world of difference between someone's personal blog (which the link you provided to all appearances seems to me to be) and a newsletter that is focused on openSUSE exclusively.
So let's make sure we're not drawing false equivalencies here in order to support a point or an idea.
I also have to disagree that no more discussion about the open-slx platform is needed - I honestly think this is a serious issue that shouldn't be just swept under the rug. Community cohesion is important to the project (or should be), and if the community fragments, then the reasons for that fragmentation MUST be understood and - if possible - be addressed. To my view, saying "no more discussion of this point is needed" is effectively trying to sweep the discussion under the rug, regardless of the consequences to the community as a whole.
The way you're coming across to me here is that you're unconcerned with community fragmentation, and that does concern me as a member of the project and as a user of openSUSE.
We're all here with the same goal in mind: to advance openSUSE. Let's not work at cross-purposes, and make sure we're all working together to achieve that goal.
Jim
On Saturday February 12 2011 01:21:15 Sascha Manns wrote:
The Question about why an new Platform, i don't answer. If you have talked with Rupert, then you know the answer. And no more discussion of this point is needed.
Since that is what everyone is wondering I would be delighted if you would answer precisely that question.
On 2011-02-11 Stephan wrote:
On Saturday February 12 2011 01:21:15 Sascha Manns wrote:
The Question about why an new Platform, i don't answer. If you have talked with Rupert, then you know the answer. And no more discussion of this point is needed.
Since that is what everyone is wondering I would be delighted if you would answer precisely that question.
Rupert and open-SLX is quite absent, usually, but if you catch them the answer usually is that they had disagreements with others while trying to change things and they decided things would go smoother on their own.
I was not involved in any of those earlier discussions but it is obviously possible that there were too many nay-sayers and too few who actually did something. It is not unprecedented in FOSS nor openSUSE. It is however sad that lately all willingness to cooperate or even talk seems to have disappeared.
On Fri, 2011-02-11 at 22:58 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:
On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 19:42:17 +0100, Sascha Manns wrote:
I want to know one thing. You can do all the great things you do, for all the very well thought out reasons you have, inside the openSUSE project, on openSUSE infrastructure with openSUSE branding. Why don't you?
Why you're blogging in http://blog.hennevogel.de/ instead of lizards?
Where any individual blogs isn't the question, Sascha - that's very different from creating an entire portal that in effect chops up the community into smaller pieces, duplicates efforts, and adds complexity where it doesn't necessarily need to be.
I agree. That's a pretty bad interpretation. Lizards was set up as a member benefit to encourage people who don't already have their own blog sites to have a place to blog without hassle of site administration. Beyond that, the comparison is truly apples to oranges. People contribute *into* the project by writing on their blogs knowing fully well it will end up on planet.opensuse.org (note the domain is opensuse.org, not elsewhere.) By contrast, This is a "bring-in" compared to a "take out" which is what's happening by taking out OWN as well as segmenting the German community into a completely different portal outside of the community's portal.
So... why does Henne write on his own blog instead of Lizards? Because he knows he's writing *intoI the community infrastructure through an aggregation tool.
I have some concerns about this myself - and I know Rupert knows my concerns because I've talked about him in the context of the open-slx community portal's forums that are being set up.
As a member of staff in the openSUSE forums, I've been concerned about this duplication of efforts - for example, in OSF, we provide a German set of forums. There's also other German forums (linuxclub.de is one I know about), so I have to seriously wonder what benefit there is to creating yet another German set of forums on the open-slx portal. Doing so divides the expertise and makes it more difficult for people looking for help to decide where to go.
That would seem to me (from my vantage point) to create unnecessary complexity and further divide a community we should ALL be working to unite rather than to further fragment.
Reducing duplication was one of the drivers (as I understand it) behind merging several different sets of forums that provided assistance to users using openSUSE.
Looking at the Fedora community or the Ubuntu community, for example, they each seem to have a single set of forums, which provides them both with a higher degree of community cohesion. I don't think I've ever seen anyone ask the question "which forums should I go to if I have questions about [Ubuntu|Fedora]?" (This doesn't mean there aren't third-party forums, but I have never, ever seen a reference to a post in a third- party Ubuntu forum, for example)
But I could certainly see that happening here if the community doesn't come together to provide that (ideally) single place to go for information and interaction.
It is certainly a concern and opens up to great confusions. The Marketing Team, for example, has been taking great efforts to bring in communities from regions that were previously disenfranchised. And already we're seeing great results as a consequence of broadening our community. We're seeing some truly great things happening. And then at the same time, we see the #1 region (Germany) being split off. Segregated. Living in an entirely different ecosystem. All this can possibly do is diminish Germany's role in openSUSE Project, and I fail to see how that could ever be such a good thing, considering the strong contributions we have always seen from the Germans.
open-slx has done some great things for the openSUSE project, but like Henne, I have a really hard time understanding why all this duplicate effort is taking place rather than leveraging the existing infrastructure as much as possible, and answering that question with "why don't you blog on lizards.opensuse.org?" doesn't really address the underlying issue or concern. It is, as Henne said, a pretty straightforward question, and either the answer is straightforward or it isn't.
To be honest, I don't think we'll ever get a straightforward answer. It's either refusal or incapable. I don't know which and i'm truly puzzled. Myself, I did not really know much about open-SLX until about a month ago. At that point, we were asked to give our support for their portal that was about to be released a week later. We obviously took the same concerns about duplication of efforts and attempted to reach out to them to discuss, particularly the claims that in effect they've been stonewalled by inactivity within the Project. And they made claims that this has been previously discussed with the Project, and yet we could find no evidence of such. We tried to negotiate an opportunity to sit down together (via IRC) and listen to their concerns about why they felt things were not moving the way it should in the Project. But there was never any interest in talking with us.
The board was literally in a meeting drafting a final appeal to discuss and resolve issues the day before the planned launch, when during the meeting, Sebas went ahead and announced the launch, only minutes after Jos got off the phone with open-SLX making his own appeal for all of us to come together. To me, it literally felt like an in-your-face action saying "We don't care if you want to talk to us, we're going to do what we want, and just to prove it, we'll move up our launch announcement just out of spite."
At that point, i became someone who was initially open-minded and wanting to hear both sides of the story and find a positive and collaborative resolution to the matter, only to be seeing that there was no good-faith action going on. I moved from open-minded to distrustful and this is a sad thing, because I do believe that a partnership with the Project and open-SLX can be a truly positive thing. But that's not going to happen at this stage if there is an unwillingness to even engage directly with the community or contact the board if they feel there's a negative aspect to the community and things are suddenly decided without any warning ahead of reasonable time.
So... I would like to ask my own direct question here... Is there ever going to be an opportunity when we can all sit at the table and have a legitimate discussion of the pros and cons of the community and how we can fit each others' goals in a complimentary way?
This can only happen if we all start playing fairly.
Bryen
If the answer isn't straightforward, then I would ask that rather than answering the question with another question, you just say "it isn't that simple" - or better yet - trust that we can discuss the issue in an intelligent way (and don't worry about the complexity, after all, the project members and board deal with a high degree of complexity in a lot of different ways) and come to a resolution that everyone benefits from.
Jim
Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits
On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:37:30 -0600, Bryen M. Yunashko wrote:
But I could certainly see that happening here if the community doesn't come together to provide that (ideally) single place to go for information and interaction.
It is certainly a concern and opens up to great confusions. The Marketing Team, for example, has been taking great efforts to bring in communities from regions that were previously disenfranchised. And already we're seeing great results as a consequence of broadening our community. We're seeing some truly great things happening. And then at the same time, we see the #1 region (Germany) being split off. Segregated. Living in an entirely different ecosystem. All this can possibly do is diminish Germany's role in openSUSE Project, and I fail to see how that could ever be such a good thing, considering the strong contributions we have always seen from the Germans.
Exactly what I'm thinking.
But I also think it doesn't hurt for either side of this conversation to let the discussion devolve into a discussion of "he said/she said" with regards to past events. Let's identify that there's an issue and work towards a compromise that everyone benefits from and that moves towards unification of the community rather than further fragmentation.
That means it's important to put all the issues on the table. What are both groups' concerns about what's currently in place at this moment? How can we bridge the differences and make for a *stronger* community?
So... I would like to ask my own direct question here... Is there ever going to be an opportunity when we can all sit at the table and have a legitimate discussion of the pros and cons of the community and how we can fit each others' goals in a complimentary way?
That would be a good starting point, certainly.
Some general comments, not directed at anyone in particular:
I think it's important that the organizations involved be clear about their goals, and if there are compromises to be made on either side, that those compromises be made in a spirit of doing what's best for the community.
I think that starts with a default assumption that what everyone wants to do is what they think is best for the community as a whole. It's easy to think of "that other group" as "adversaries", but an adversarial approach isn't going to move us forward.
Jim
On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 01:47:44 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:
But I also think it doesn't hurt for either side of this conversation to let the discussion devolve into a discussion of "he said/she said" with regards to past events.
Oh, geez, I meant "it doesn't HELP" here. How that got through my edits I'll never know. ;-)
Jim
On 2011-02-11 Bryen wrote:
On Fri, 2011-02-11 at 22:58 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:
On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 19:42:17 +0100, Sascha Manns wrote:
I want to know one thing. You can do all the great things you do, for all the very well thought out reasons you have, inside the openSUSE project, on openSUSE infrastructure with openSUSE branding. Why don't you?
Why you're blogging in http://blog.hennevogel.de/ instead of lizards?
Where any individual blogs isn't the question, Sascha - that's very different from creating an entire portal that in effect chops up the community into smaller pieces, duplicates efforts, and adds complexity where it doesn't necessarily need to be.
I agree. That's a pretty bad interpretation. Lizards was set up as a member benefit to encourage people who don't already have their own blog sites to have a place to blog without hassle of site administration. Beyond that, the comparison is truly apples to oranges. People contribute *into* the project by writing on their blogs knowing fully well it will end up on planet.opensuse.org (note the domain is opensuse.org, not elsewhere.) By contrast, This is a "bring-in" compared to a "take out" which is what's happening by taking out OWN as well as segmenting the German community into a completely different portal outside of the community's portal.
So... why does Henne write on his own blog instead of Lizards? Because he knows he's writing *intoI the community infrastructure through an aggregation tool.
I have some concerns about this myself - and I know Rupert knows my concerns because I've talked about him in the context of the open-slx community portal's forums that are being set up.
As a member of staff in the openSUSE forums, I've been concerned about this duplication of efforts - for example, in OSF, we provide a German set of forums. There's also other German forums (linuxclub.de is one I know about), so I have to seriously wonder what benefit there is to creating yet another German set of forums on the open-slx portal. Doing so divides the expertise and makes it more difficult for people looking for help to decide where to go.
That would seem to me (from my vantage point) to create unnecessary complexity and further divide a community we should ALL be working to unite rather than to further fragment.
Reducing duplication was one of the drivers (as I understand it) behind merging several different sets of forums that provided assistance to users using openSUSE.
Looking at the Fedora community or the Ubuntu community, for example, they each seem to have a single set of forums, which provides them both with a higher degree of community cohesion. I don't think I've ever seen anyone ask the question "which forums should I go to if I have questions about [Ubuntu|Fedora]?" (This doesn't mean there aren't third-party forums, but I have never, ever seen a reference to a post in a third- party Ubuntu forum, for example)
But I could certainly see that happening here if the community doesn't come together to provide that (ideally) single place to go for information and interaction.
It is certainly a concern and opens up to great confusions. The Marketing Team, for example, has been taking great efforts to bring in communities from regions that were previously disenfranchised. And already we're seeing great results as a consequence of broadening our community. We're seeing some truly great things happening. And then at the same time, we see the #1 region (Germany) being split off. Segregated. Living in an entirely different ecosystem. All this can possibly do is diminish Germany's role in openSUSE Project, and I fail to see how that could ever be such a good thing, considering the strong contributions we have always seen from the Germans.
open-slx has done some great things for the openSUSE project, but like Henne, I have a really hard time understanding why all this duplicate effort is taking place rather than leveraging the existing infrastructure as much as possible, and answering that question with "why don't you blog on lizards.opensuse.org?" doesn't really address the underlying issue or concern. It is, as Henne said, a pretty straightforward question, and either the answer is straightforward or it isn't.
To be honest, I don't think we'll ever get a straightforward answer. It's either refusal or incapable. I don't know which and i'm truly puzzled. Myself, I did not really know much about open-SLX until about a month ago. At that point, we were asked to give our support for their portal that was about to be released a week later. We obviously took the same concerns about duplication of efforts and attempted to reach out to them to discuss, particularly the claims that in effect they've been stonewalled by inactivity within the Project. And they made claims that this has been previously discussed with the Project, and yet we could find no evidence of such. We tried to negotiate an opportunity to sit down together (via IRC) and listen to their concerns about why they felt things were not moving the way it should in the Project. But there was never any interest in talking with us.
The board was literally in a meeting drafting a final appeal to discuss and resolve issues the day before the planned launch, when during the meeting, Sebas went ahead and announced the launch, only minutes after Jos got off the phone with open-SLX making his own appeal for all of us to come together. To me, it literally felt like an in-your-face action saying "We don't care if you want to talk to us, we're going to do what we want, and just to prove it, we'll move up our launch announcement just out of spite."
At that point, i became someone who was initially open-minded and wanting to hear both sides of the story and find a positive and collaborative resolution to the matter, only to be seeing that there was no good-faith action going on. I moved from open-minded to distrustful and this is a sad thing, because I do believe that a partnership with the Project and open-SLX can be a truly positive thing. But that's not going to happen at this stage if there is an unwillingness to even engage directly with the community or contact the board if they feel there's a negative aspect to the community and things are suddenly decided without any warning ahead of reasonable time.
So... I would like to ask my own direct question here... Is there ever going to be an opportunity when we can all sit at the table and have a legitimate discussion of the pros and cons of the community and how we can fit each others' goals in a complimentary way?
This can only happen if we all start playing fairly.
Amen.
Bryen
If the answer isn't straightforward, then I would ask that rather than answering the question with another question, you just say "it isn't that simple" - or better yet - trust that we can discuss the issue in an intelligent way (and don't worry about the complexity, after all, the project members and board deal with a high degree of complexity in a lot of different ways) and come to a resolution that everyone benefits from.
Jim
Le 10/02/2011 16:50, Sascha Manns a écrit :
he
"openSUSE Wochenrückblick" on de.opensuse.org or some other place?
The team who has done the german weekly news don't want to contribute there anymore. Just ask Linuxsusefan as example...
looks like the board should have been called for making things cooler (not only Henne). Jumping on this thread makes it scary :-(
openSUSE is growing, and this is always difficult :-)
Kepp cool boy, Real cool... (West Side Story) :-))
jdd
On 2011-02-10 Henne wrote:
Hi,
On 02/10/2011 03:46 PM, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
On Thursday, February 10, 2011 14:58:37 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Let me share my personal view on this, though.
It's sad to say, but the amount of stop energy when doing something differently or new does a lot of harm to the project
And everybody agrees with that in general. However this isn't the issue everybody has with this move.
People tell you that they don't like Sascha or anyone else to push things into open-slx.de infrastructure and away from opensuse.org infrastructure.
Simple fact, if moving stuff onto opensuse.org is the easiest and most promising way to get things done, we'd probably do it.
Okay so why does Sascha never raise what he needs to have to do the "openSUSE Wochenrückblick" on de.opensuse.org or some other place?
I have to agree with Henne here. The earlier discussion about the new portal as well as this thing have simply been done without discussion - just a notification that you were going to do it. I'm pretty sure you, sebas, would agree with me that that is not the right way to do it. If you do something new, that's cool. If you do it in complete isolation, dumping it on a community, knowing that it duplicates work they are doing and even goes against something they've been trying to do (unifying everything under one domain and look & feel etc) - stupid.
I agree that there is too much slowing-down sometimes, but really, it has to come from both sides. openSLX has to realize that they have to work with the existing community and with the openSUSE Board as extension to that. And to make it clear, I'm also talking from Novell's perspective here. If the community is unhappy with openSLX, so is Novell.
Henne
Le jeudi 10 février 2011, à 15:46 +0100, Sebastian Kügler a écrit :
Simple fact, if moving stuff onto opensuse.org is the easiest and most promising way to get things done, we'd probably do it. Unfortunately, it's not, and that's a big problem because it shows that it's not very attractive to build inside openSUSE infra.
Just wondering: would open-slx be happy to provide the new services under an opensuse.org domain? I surely would be happy to have it there.
(I'm explicitly ignoring the fact that some services are duplicating existing services, and that there seems to be no real communication about the development of those services; this is fixable)
Vincent
Hey Vincent,
On Thursday, February 10, 2011 18:29:19 Vincent Untz wrote:
Le jeudi 10 février 2011, à 15:46 +0100, Sebastian Kügler a écrit :
Simple fact, if moving stuff onto opensuse.org is the easiest and most promising way to get things done, we'd probably do it. Unfortunately, it's not, and that's a big problem because it shows that it's not very attractive to build inside openSUSE infra.
Just wondering: would open-slx be happy to provide the new services under an opensuse.org domain? I surely would be happy to have it there.
That's really up to Sascha and those who actively contribute to the German news letter. It's not a decision from open-slx, but the German newsletter's team where they prefer to have it hosted.
I'm personally fine with both ways, but would much rather see an active newsletter than endless discussions about how things are going (which this thread is quickly turning into :/), therefore I do think it's a good idea to try it under a different umbrella. It might just work out really well, with contributors being more happy. =)
(I'm explicitly ignoring the fact that some services are duplicating existing services, and that there seems to be no real communication about the development of those services; this is fixable)
The duplication of services has been pointed out earlier, and it probably stems from looking at for example the end-user portal merely from a technical point of view. The concept behind it is a pure focus on German speaking end- users, with original, quality controlled and tightly integrated content. I don't expect everybody to see why this makes such a big difference just yet, that's the nature of a new approach. It's up to us to show why and how this adds value, maybe not primarily to existing contributors, but to new ones that can get more easily acquainted with openSUSE.
Cheers,
2011/2/10 Satoru Matsumoto helios_reds@gmx.net:
Yesterday, this topic was discussed in -project meeting. http://community.opensuse.org/meetings/opensuse-project/2011/opensuse-projec...
I appreciate you, meeting participant, discussing this topic and I'm sorry I couldn't join the meeting.
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to?
I think this is the most important question here and should be clarified first. Without clarifying this, further discussions would be invalid.
Sorry if I have confused you. The 2 major issues which I want to clarify in this thread are:
- License of the contents on *.opensuse.org sites
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to,
when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN?
===================================================================
- 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).
If I understand correctly, when someone wants to *re-use* the contents on those sites, she has to ask permission from Novell. And only the copyright owner (in this case, Novell) can decide which license to be applied.
This situation makes things complex.
We can re-use and modify contents on en.o.o according to the GFDL license. That's why we can translate the contents on en.o.o and put the translations on $LANG.o.o. The original articles on en.o.o are published under GFDL and the translations of those articles will be also published on $LANG.o.o under GFDL license - there's no problem at all.
But how about articles from news.o.o, lizards.o.o and lists.o.o? Can we re-use and translate them without permission of Novell? In addition, when we translate them for OWN Japanese edition and put them on ja.o.o (just for example ;-) ), do we need to 'expressly indicate the license for them otherwise'? (If we don't do so, all the contents on ja.o.o will be automatically considered to be published under GFDL license.)
I believe all the announcements from our project should be reached to as many people as possible regardless of whether the readers are good at reading English or not. And most of the authors of lizards.o.o also might hope their blog posts will be read by as many readers as possible. That's one of the biggest reasons why I translate OWN every week. The current situation - license of the contents on *.opensuse.org aren't defined - isn't good for me (and for those who want to translate OWN), at least.
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to,
when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN?
If the license issue above will be clarified, the situation will be better than now. But still, there are other problems.
ATM, we are introducing articles from external sites (personal blogs and sites by organizations) in OWN.
I know, basically we need to ask permissions from copyright owners of those articles each time we want to draw them for OWN, unless they are published under the licenses such as GFDL or CC BY-SA. But that will become strained for us OWN team.
However, most of the copyright laws contain exemptions, which allow us to draw (quote) others works legitimately under certain conditions. What are considered to 'legitimate citations' depends on each law and guideline.
So the question here is: which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN?
- The authors of original articles live in various countries.
- The external sites are hosted in various countries.
- (ATM,)we are using berlios.de for editing OWN.
- OWN is published primarily on news.o.o.
- PDF and Wiki versions of OWN are put on en.o.o.
- Translated OWN are published on $LANG.o.o.
- Greek editions are also published on http://own.opensuse.gr/ , which
is run by Greek community (?) [1].
- Infrastructures for openSUSE project are owned and run by Novell,
which exists in USA.
- Editors of OWN live in various countries.
- The current editor in chief (Sascha) lives in Germany.
- Translators of OWN live in various countries (ATM, only ja and gr are
active so that most of them live in Japan or Greece).
Now you might understand why this issue is so complex.
Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN, in case ...:
a. we publish English version of OWN on news.o.o ?
A. we should refer to the law and guideline of each original author or copyright owner. B. we should refer to the law and guideline of USA, because infrastructure of news.o.o is owned by Novell. C. we should refer to the law and guideline of Germany, because editor in chief lives in Germany.
b. we publish $LANG version of OWN on $LANG.o.o ? (to make things simple, let's imagine ja here)
A. we should refer to the law and guideline of each original author or copyright owner. B. we should refer to the law and guideline of USA, because infrastructure of $LANG.o.o is owned by Novell. C. we should refer to the law and guideline of Japan, because all the translators and most of the readers live in Japan.
c. we publish Greek version of OWN on own.opensuse.gr ?
A. we should refer to the law and guideline of each original author or copyright owner. B. we should refer to the law and guideline of USA, because the original OWN which are the base of Greek translations are on news.o.o. C. we should refer to the law and guideline of Greece, because the site for publishing Greek version is run by Greek organization and all the translators and most of the readers live in Greece.
If the answer for every situation would be A, we have to give up drawing contents from external sites because it is almost impossible to refer to laws and guidelines of all over the world or ask permissions from copyright owners each time. :-(
But if the answers would be B or C, we just need to refer to the corresponding laws and guidelines. That will make our work much more compliant.
[1] This is yet another topic, though. When I search the registrar of opensuse.gr at https://grweb.ics.forth.gr/Whois?lang=en , I could see 'Registrar Referral URL:http://www.papaki.gr'. So, the domain opensuse.gr doesn't seem to be owned by Novell. But according to our trademark guidelines: 'If you want to include all or part of an openSUSE Mark in a domain name, you should seek our permission (see "Contact Information" below to request permission). (...) By "domain name" we mean to refer to toplevel domains and second-level domains, but not sub-domains.' http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Trademark_Guidelines#Domain_Names
I have a little concern, whether Greek community is permitted to use this domain name by Novell or not. If not yet, I recommend you to ask permission from Novell. ;-)
About that, I will tell you the story and anyone who knows should tell us (the Greek Community) about it and if we need to ask permission from Novell. Let me say at that point that we don't have a reason not to ask permission from Novell if needed, the reason we did not so far is because we believe we didn't have to. When we started the Greek community a few months ago a friend of the community told us he owned the opensuse.gr domain name and he told us that he can redirect it wherever we wanted. The opensuse.gr was for sale when this person bought it legal(under Greek laws). Now we use that at the moment as re-directions to: - http://opensuse.gr redirects to http://el.opensuse.org/Main_Page - http://amb.opensuse.gr redirects to http://opensuseambassadors.blogspot.com/ - http://own.opensuse.gr redirects to http://el.opensuse.org/Weekly_news and we are planning to do also something else those days that we might use another redirection,but it is mainly planning for now... Bottom line if in my country I can legally buy a domain name that it is related to a company which laws are stronger? We are using this domain name for community causes ONLY anyway so asking permission and finally getting it we don't think is a problem, please only those who really know that answer me on that so that I won't be confused( I get that easily in legal matters). After that if I have to ask permission from Novell I will inform the rest of the community about it so that we make the right actions so that all will be perfectly legal. BTW can anyone give me an example of a toplevel domain a second-level domain and a sub-domain? Thanks in advance Kostas
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
Hi Kostas,
Kostas Koudaras wrote:
BTW can anyone give me an example of a toplevel domain a second-level domain and a sub-domain?
Although I myself can't read Greek, you can read s short explanation for top-level domain at: http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain
For example, look at the domain name 'software.opensuse.org'.
Top level domain: org Socond level domain: opensuse sub-domain: software
So, the word 'opensuse' is used as a second level domain in 'opensuse.gr'. On the other hand, I've registered a domain name 'opensuse-ja.homelinux.org' at DynDNS, but the term 'opensuse' is used as third level domain in that case.
Best,
Kostas Koudaras wrote:
About that, I will tell you the story and anyone who knows should tell us (the Greek Community) about it and if we need to ask permission from Novell. Let me say at that point that we don't have a reason not to ask permission from Novell if needed, the reason we did not so far is because we believe we didn't have to. When we started the Greek community a few months ago a friend of the community told us he owned the opensuse.gr domain name and he told us that he can redirect it wherever we wanted. The opensuse.gr was for sale when this person bought it legal(under Greek laws). Now we use that at the moment as re-directions to:
- http://opensuse.gr redirects to http://el.opensuse.org/Main_Page
- http://amb.opensuse.gr redirects to http://opensuseambassadors.blogspot.com/
- http://own.opensuse.gr redirects to http://el.opensuse.org/Weekly_news
and we are planning to do also something else those days that we might use another redirection,but it is mainly planning for now... Bottom line if in my country I can legally buy a domain name that it is related to a company which laws are stronger?
You can own domain name 'opensuse.xxx', if it's not owned by others yet and you may sell it legally as well. But trademark is another issue. As far as I understand and according to trademark guidelines, 'you should seek Novell's permission' when you want to provide some services by using 'opensuse.xxx' domain name.
We are using this domain name for community causes ONLY anyway so asking permission and finally getting it we don't think is a problem, please only those who really know that answer me on that so that I won't be confused( I get that easily in legal matters). After that if I have to ask permission from Novell I will inform the rest of the community about it so that we make the right actions so that all will be perfectly legal.
If I understand correctly, what Novell concerns is that the term 'openSUSE' will be used by third parties as if they are authorized agents. So I don't think Novell has a reason to reject your request for permission, as long as you use the domain name for Greek community's activities. ;-)
Best,
About that, I will tell you the story and anyone who knows should tell us (the Greek Community) about it and if we need to ask permission from Novell. Let me say at that point that we don't have a reason not to ask permission from Novell if needed, the reason we did not so far is because we believe we didn't have to. When we started the Greek community a few months ago a friend of the community told us he owned the opensuse.gr domain name and he told us that he can redirect it wherever we wanted. The opensuse.gr was for sale when this person bought it legal(under Greek laws). Now we use that at the moment as re-directions to:
- http://opensuse.gr redirects to http://el.opensuse.org/Main_Page
- http://amb.opensuse.gr redirects to
http://opensuseambassadors.blogspot.com/
- http://own.opensuse.gr redirects to http://el.opensuse.org/Weekly_news
and we are planning to do also something else those days that we might use another redirection,but it is mainly planning for now... Bottom line if in my country I can legally buy a domain name that it is related to a company which laws are stronger? We are using this domain name for community causes ONLY anyway so asking permission and finally getting it we don't think is a problem, please only those who really know that answer me on that so that I won't be confused( I get that easily in legal matters). After that if I have to ask permission from Novell I will inform the rest of the community about it so that we make the right actions so that all will be perfectly legal.
Hi Kostas,
As Vincent pointed out, the domain name policy is outlined on the trademarks page. I'm adding permission@novell.com to the "To" line to get you an official answer.
The Greek Community is doing great stuff!
regards,
AlanClark
2011/2/11 Alan Clark aclark@novell.com:
About that, I will tell you the story and anyone who knows should tell us (the Greek Community) about it and if we need to ask permission from Novell. Let me say at that point that we don't have a reason not to ask permission from Novell if needed, the reason we did not so far is because we believe we didn't have to. When we started the Greek community a few months ago a friend of the community told us he owned the opensuse.gr domain name and he told us that he can redirect it wherever we wanted. The opensuse.gr was for sale when this person bought it legal(under Greek laws). Now we use that at the moment as re-directions to:
- http://opensuse.gr redirects to http://el.opensuse.org/Main_Page
- http://amb.opensuse.gr redirects to
http://opensuseambassadors.blogspot.com/
- http://own.opensuse.gr redirects to http://el.opensuse.org/Weekly_news
and we are planning to do also something else those days that we might use another redirection,but it is mainly planning for now... Bottom line if in my country I can legally buy a domain name that it is related to a company which laws are stronger? We are using this domain name for community causes ONLY anyway so asking permission and finally getting it we don't think is a problem, please only those who really know that answer me on that so that I won't be confused( I get that easily in legal matters). After that if I have to ask permission from Novell I will inform the rest of the community about it so that we make the right actions so that all will be perfectly legal.
Hi Kostas,
As Vincent pointed out, the domain name policy is outlined on the trademarks page. I'm adding permission@novell.com to the "To" line to get you an official answer.
The Greek Community is doing great stuff!
regards,
AlanClark
Ok, thank you all for the information. I will inform the rest of the Greek community now. And I wait for the permission from Novell. Until we get the permission if you think that there is a reason to suspend those URL's please let me know to inform the owner of opensuse.gr to do that, although this I think would probably bring unnecessary upset to the Greek community. Kostas
On 2/10/2011 at 09:35 PM, in message
AANLkTin_rtvcvDxe8jr6Ownpyq90E6rSVNSXKmCuh4RT@mail.gmail.com, Kostas Koudaras warlordfff@gmail.com wrote:
2011/2/11 Alan Clark aclark@novell.com:
About that, I will tell you the story and anyone who knows should tell us (the Greek Community) about it and if we need to ask permission from Novell. Let me say at that point that we don't have a reason not to ask permission from Novell if needed, the reason we did not so far is because we believe we didn't have to. When we started the Greek community a few months ago a friend of the community told us he owned the opensuse.gr domain name and he told us that he can redirect it wherever we wanted. The opensuse.gr was for sale when this person bought it legal(under Greek laws). Now we use that at the moment as re-directions to:
- http://opensuse.gr redirects to http://el.opensuse.org/Main_Page
- http://amb.opensuse.gr redirects to
http://opensuseambassadors.blogspot.com/
- http://own.opensuse.gr redirects to http://el.opensuse.org/Weekly_news
and we are planning to do also something else those days that we might use another redirection,but it is mainly planning for now... Bottom line if in my country I can legally buy a domain name that it is related to a company which laws are stronger? We are using this domain name for community causes ONLY anyway so asking permission and finally getting it we don't think is a problem, please only those who really know that answer me on that so that I won't be confused( I get that easily in legal matters). After that if I have to ask permission from Novell I will inform the rest of the community about it so that we make the right actions so that all will be perfectly legal.
Hi Kostas,
As Vincent pointed out, the domain name policy is outlined on the trademarks
page.
I'm adding permission@novell.com to the "To" line to get you an official
answer.
The Greek Community is doing great stuff!
regards,
AlanClark
Ok, thank you all for the information. I will inform the rest of the Greek community now. And I wait for the permission from Novell. Until we get the permission if you think that there is a reason to suspend those URL's please let me know to inform the owner of opensuse.gr to do that, although this I think would probably bring unnecessary upset to the Greek community. Kostas
No reason to suspend at all. Keep going. The Greek community is a great contribution to the project. I'll get you the information you're looking for from permission@.
thanks,
Alan
On 2/9/2011 at 09:51 PM, in message 4D536ECC.50002@gmx.net, Satoru Matsumoto
helios_reds@gmx.net wrote:
Yesterday, this topic was discussed in -project meeting. http://community.opensuse.org/meetings/opensuse-project/2011/opensuse-projec t.2011-02-09-16.06.log.html
I appreciate you, meeting participant, discussing this topic and I'm sorry I couldn't join the meeting.
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to?
I think this is the most important question here and should be clarified first. Without clarifying this, further discussions would be invalid.
Sorry if I have confused you. The 2 major issues which I want to clarify in this thread are:
- License of the contents on *.opensuse.org sites
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to, when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN?
===================================================================
- 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
- 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.
Hi Alan,
Alan Clark wrote:
- 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.
- 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&...
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,
Le 11/02/2011 15:35, Satoru Matsumoto a écrit :
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?"
that's not a question we can answer...
the problem is pretty hard. One have to respect the law of the country where he lives. But being question of a web page, does it belongs to the readers country, the server place country or any other I don't think of?
in a jugement of french court against Google, the french court decided that the law is that of *the reader*. The case was the one of advertising objects from world war II. Google was asked to not deliver the info to french country and this was acknowledged by Google
(may be it's ebay, not google, but the result is the same)
so the best we can do is to be very conservative
jdd
jdd wrote:
Le 11/02/2011 15:35, Satoru Matsumoto a écrit :
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?"
that's not a question we can answer...
the problem is pretty hard. One have to respect the law of the country where he lives. But being question of a web page, does it belongs to the readers country, the server place country or any other I don't think of?
in a jugement of french court against Google, the french court decided that the law is that of *the reader*. The case was the one of advertising objects from world war II. Google was asked to not deliver the info to french country and this was acknowledged by Google
(may be it's ebay, not google, but the result is the same)
so the best we can do is to be very conservative
So, let's see this matter through a different lens.
As I wrote in another post in this thread, I think '99.99% we won't be charged with violation of copyright, because most of the authors want their works to be read by as many readers as possible.'
However, in case a copyright owner will start a lawsuit, who will be the defendant? For now, openSUSE Foundation is not yet established and openSUSE project itself doesn't have legal personality.
This is not only the case of OWN team, but may be also the case of other teams in openSUSE project. If an activity of a team (and in case the activity is a part of activities of whole project) will violate some laws, who should be responsible?
Best,
Le 11/02/2011 20:15, Satoru Matsumoto a écrit :
As I wrote in another post in this thread, I think '99.99% we won't be charged with violation of copyright, because most of the authors want their works to be read by as many readers as possible.'
for sure :-). I was only raising a legal objection...
However, in case a copyright owner will start a lawsuit, who will be the defendant? For now, openSUSE Foundation is not yet established and openSUSE project itself doesn't have legal personality.
the people that sign the text will be sued, if not the web site owner according to the whois, don't thing judges can be fooled.
but usually no court will come up before extensive negotiation be done, so not a real threat
jdd
Hello Alan,
"Alan Clark" aclark@novell.com wrote at Friday 11 February 2011:
On 2/9/2011 at 09:51 PM, in message 4D536ECC.50002@gmx.net, Satoru Matsumoto
helios_reds@gmx.net wrote:
Yesterday, this topic was discussed in -project meeting. http://community.opensuse.org/meetings/opensuse-project/2011/opensu se-projec t.2011-02-09-16.06.log.html
I appreciate you, meeting participant, discussing this topic and I'm sorry I couldn't join the meeting.
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer
to?
I think this is the most important question here and should be clarified first. Without clarifying this, further discussions would be invalid.
Sorry if I have confused you. The 2 major issues which I want to clarify in this thread are:
License of the contents on *.opensuse.org sites
Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to,
when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN?
===================================================================
- 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
Then it would be better to say this on the bottom of news.o.o, lizards.o.o too. But if i understand this right, GFDL is a bad choose for Webcontent. If we go to: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html#addendum we see, that all Documents who are standing under the GFDL must have a Copyright/License Block. No of our Documents have such Block. I think this is a better License for our Documentation (Doc-Team). The Preamble says:
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom.
In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Comparison_of_GFDL_and_CC-BY- SA we can see, that the GFDL "requires" to paste the full License into each new written Document. There is just a Link to the GFDL Site not enough.
So i propose to change the Content from *.opensuse.org to a CC License maybe CC-BY-SA. In that case a Link to the CC License is just enough.
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.
ATM we doing so: * We just using a Article in whole for the Weekly News if the Original Article is licensed under CC-BY-SA. * All other Articles who doesn't match this License we just introduce with 2 or 3 Paragraphs.
In all Cases we linking to the Original Article and we adding $SITE/$AUTHOR before the Title of the Article.
I propose to use this Legalnotice for the Weekly News:
This compilation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (unless expressly otherwise indicated) by the openSUSE Weekly News Team. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons 171 Second Street Suite 300 San Francisco California 94105 USA.
If any Article doesn't match this License we can add the Copyrightnotice of the Original Article on the End of the Newsletter.
Maybe this is a solution?
Hi Sascha and mates,
Sascha Manns wrote:
Hello Alan,
"Alan Clark" aclark@novell.com wrote at Friday 11 February 2011:
On 2/9/2011 at 09:51 PM, in message 4D536ECC.50002@gmx.net, Satoru Matsumoto
helios_reds@gmx.net wrote:
Yesterday, this topic was discussed in -project meeting. http://community.opensuse.org/meetings/opensuse-project/2011/opensu se-projec t.2011-02-09-16.06.log.html
I appreciate you, meeting participant, discussing this topic and I'm sorry I couldn't join the meeting.
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer
to?
I think this is the most important question here and should be clarified first. Without clarifying this, further discussions would be invalid.
Sorry if I have confused you. The 2 major issues which I want to clarify in this thread are:
License of the contents on *.opensuse.org sites
Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to,
when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN?
===================================================================
- 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
Then it would be better to say this on the bottom of news.o.o, lizards.o.o too. But if i understand this right, GFDL is a bad choose for Webcontent. If we go to: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html#addendum we see, that all Documents who are standing under the GFDL must have a Copyright/License Block. No of our Documents have such Block. I think this is a better License for our Documentation (Doc-Team). The Preamble says:
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom.
In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Comparison_of_GFDL_and_CC-BY- SA we can see, that the GFDL "requires" to paste the full License into each new written Document. There is just a Link to the GFDL Site not enough.
Although that would be hard to believe (I mean, I don't think we need to paste the full license terms to *each newly created page* on our sites. And if Sascha's interpretation is correct, that means, WE ARE NOW VIOLATING THE LICENSE!), I think applying CC BY-SA to all the contents on *.opensuse.org sites instead of GFDL 1.2 is the better solution, if it's possible.
So i propose to change the Content from *.opensuse.org to a CC License maybe CC-BY-SA. In that case a Link to the CC License is just enough.
If we can change, the situation would be much better. That's why I asked in my top post of this thread, "Can we ask Novell to apply CC BY-SA 3.0 license for every content on *.opensuse.org including Wiki?" Only the copyright owner - in this case, Novell - can change the license.
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.
ATM we doing so:
- We just using a Article in whole for the Weekly News if the Original
Article is licensed under CC-BY-SA.
- All other Articles who doesn't match this License we just introduce
with 2 or 3 Paragraphs.
Wait a minute. How about the personal blog posts from outside of the *.opensuse.org sites which are aggregated to Planet openSUSE but the license for them are not clear?
In all Cases we linking to the Original Article and we adding $SITE/$AUTHOR before the Title of the Article.
I propose to use this Legalnotice for the Weekly News:
This compilation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (unless expressly otherwise indicated) by the openSUSE Weekly News Team. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons 171 Second Street Suite 300 San Francisco California 94105 USA.
If any Article doesn't match this License we can add the Copyrightnotice of the Original Article on the End of the Newsletter.
Maybe this is a solution?
I think changing the license for all the contents on *.opensuse.org from GFDL to CC BY-SA should be done for the first step. In other words, I don't think switching the license of OWN alone is good (that may cause conflicts with other articles on *.opensuse.org). When the change would be done, OWN would be also published under CC BY-SA automattically if we publish them on news.o.o or wiki.o.o.
Best,
On Sat, 2011-02-12 at 02:48 +0900, Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Hi Sascha and mates,
Sascha Manns wrote:
Hello Alan,
"Alan Clark" aclark@novell.com wrote at Friday 11 February 2011:
On 2/9/2011 at 09:51 PM, in message 4D536ECC.50002@gmx.net, Satoru Matsumoto
helios_reds@gmx.net wrote:
Yesterday, this topic was discussed in -project meeting. http://community.opensuse.org/meetings/opensuse-project/2011/opensu se-projec t.2011-02-09-16.06.log.html
I appreciate you, meeting participant, discussing this topic and I'm sorry I couldn't join the meeting.
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
- Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer
to?
I think this is the most important question here and should be clarified first. Without clarifying this, further discussions would be invalid.
Sorry if I have confused you. The 2 major issues which I want to clarify in this thread are:
License of the contents on *.opensuse.org sites
Which country's copyright law and guidelines should we refer to,
when we want to draw contents from external sites for OWN?
===================================================================
- 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
Then it would be better to say this on the bottom of news.o.o, lizards.o.o too. But if i understand this right, GFDL is a bad choose for Webcontent. If we go to: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html#addendum we see, that all Documents who are standing under the GFDL must have a Copyright/License Block. No of our Documents have such Block. I think this is a better License for our Documentation (Doc-Team). The Preamble says:
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom.
In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Comparison_of_GFDL_and_CC-BY- SA we can see, that the GFDL "requires" to paste the full License into each new written Document. There is just a Link to the GFDL Site not enough.
Although that would be hard to believe (I mean, I don't think we need to paste the full license terms to *each newly created page* on our sites. And if Sascha's interpretation is correct, that means, WE ARE NOW VIOLATING THE LICENSE!), I think applying CC BY-SA to all the contents on *.opensuse.org sites instead of GFDL 1.2 is the better solution, if it's possible.
So i propose to change the Content from *.opensuse.org to a CC License maybe CC-BY-SA. In that case a Link to the CC License is just enough.
If we can change, the situation would be much better. That's why I asked in my top post of this thread, "Can we ask Novell to apply CC BY-SA 3.0 license for every content on *.opensuse.org including Wiki?" Only the copyright owner - in this case, Novell - can change the license.
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.
ATM we doing so:
- We just using a Article in whole for the Weekly News if the Original
Article is licensed under CC-BY-SA.
- All other Articles who doesn't match this License we just introduce
with 2 or 3 Paragraphs.
Wait a minute. How about the personal blog posts from outside of the *.opensuse.org sites which are aggregated to Planet openSUSE but the license for them are not clear?
Planet aggregator does not contain any feed in the source code, so that should be fine. People reading it, copying it should respect the author's license in my opinion
In all Cases we linking to the Original Article and we adding $SITE/$AUTHOR before the Title of the Article.
I propose to use this Legalnotice for the Weekly News:
This compilation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (unless expressly otherwise indicated) by the openSUSE Weekly News Team. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons 171 Second Street Suite 300 San Francisco California 94105 USA.
If any Article doesn't match this License we can add the Copyrightnotice of the Original Article on the End of the Newsletter.
Maybe this is a solution?
I think changing the license for all the contents on *.opensuse.org from GFDL to CC BY-SA should be done for the first step. In other words, I don't think switching the license of OWN alone is good (that may cause conflicts with other articles on *.opensuse.org). When the change would be done, OWN would be also published under CC BY-SA automattically if we publish them on news.o.o or wiki.o.o.
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/ _/_/
On 2011-02-11 23:37:23 (+0530), Manu Gupta manugupt1@gmail.com wrote: [...]
Wait a minute. How about the personal blog posts from outside of the *.opensuse.org sites which are aggregated to Planet openSUSE but the license for them are not clear?
Planet aggregator does not contain any feed in the source code, so that should be fine. People reading it, copying it should respect the author's license in my opinion
Furthermore, planet.opensuse.org is "opt-in": people ask admin@opensuse.org (or me directly) to add their feed to the aggregator. I can't really imagine a situation where a person who's blog is aggregated on planet on her request sues us... ;)
cheers,
Hi Pascal,
Pascal Bleser wrote:
On 2011-02-11 23:37:23 (+0530), Manu Gupta manugupt1@gmail.com wrote: [...]
Wait a minute. How about the personal blog posts from outside of the *.opensuse.org sites which are aggregated to Planet openSUSE but the license for them are not clear?
Planet aggregator does not contain any feed in the source code, so that should be fine. People reading it, copying it should respect the author's license in my opinion
Furthermore, planet.opensuse.org is "opt-in": people ask admin@opensuse.org (or me directly) to add their feed to the aggregator. I can't really imagine a situation where a person who's blog is aggregated on planet on her request sues us... ;)
That's for sure. But if we could add something like 'terms of use' to planet.opensuse.org which says "your blogs aggregated on this planet may be republished on other opensuse.org sites under GFDL license for the purpose of marketing and promoting openSUSE" for example, it would be prefect for us. Do you think we can?
Best,
On 2011-02-14 11:17:38 (+0900), Satoru Matsumoto helios_reds@gmx.net wrote:
Pascal Bleser wrote:
On 2011-02-11 23:37:23 (+0530), Manu Gupta manugupt1@gmail.com wrote: [...]
Wait a minute. How about the personal blog posts from outside of the *.opensuse.org sites which are aggregated to Planet openSUSE but the license for them are not clear?
Planet aggregator does not contain any feed in the source code, so that should be fine. People reading it, copying it should respect the author's license in my opinion
Furthermore, planet.opensuse.org is "opt-in": people ask admin@opensuse.org (or me directly) to add their feed to the aggregator. I can't really imagine a situation where a person who's blog is aggregated on planet on her request sues us... ;)
That's for sure. But if we could add something like 'terms of use' to planet.opensuse.org which says "your blogs aggregated on this planet may be republished on other opensuse.org sites under GFDL license for the purpose of marketing and promoting openSUSE" for example, it would be prefect for us. Do you think we can?
We can't, because the owner of the content is the original author of each post, and the license of the content is the license of each post.
The only "terms of use" we can add on planet would be exactly that: the aggregated content of this site is owned by the respective authors of each aggregated post. (And similar for the license.)
The only option would be to ask all the people who are currently aggregated, as well as every person who wants to be aggregated from now on whether they agree that their content is also licensed under the GFDL (or CC or whatever we want to have). Or, rather, that it may be relicensed under GFDL/CC.
It's a bit tricky if it isn't mentioned on the feed source though, as all we would have as proof would be those emails (almost always without a digital signature, by the way, for what it would be worth.)
Not 100% sure I still have all the email addresses, and it will surely be quite some work, but that could be done. And it is the only option, IMHO (but IANAL.)
But let's not go all bureaucratic where it's not needed. If such an issue arises, which won't happen as people ask for their blog to be aggregated on planet (and, hence, I don't see why they would mind their content being cited as-is on OWN either), it would most certainly be a takedown notice first. Of course, it is important to cite, and not transform nor take out of context what has been written because in such situations, I could very well imagine that someone could be put off and complain. But yet, 99.999% chances are that the person in question would ask for her feed to be removed from planet and/or OWN, not sue... sue who anyway? And why?
I care as much as everyone else about the licenses, but let's not panic nor rush anything here. Let's weigh all the pros and cons of the potential licenses as well as the processes, to find something that would cover our asses, and not become overly tedious either (such as a written letter with signature, which is probably the only really safe option -- except, of course, if the license is explicitly mentioned on the feed source/blog and if it is compatible with the license we wish to use.)
cheers
Pascal Bleser wrote:
But let's not go all bureaucratic where it's not needed. If such an issue arises, which won't happen as people ask for their blog to be aggregated on planet (and, hence, I don't see why they would mind their content being cited as-is on OWN either), it would most certainly be a takedown notice first. Of course, it is important to cite, and not transform nor take out of context what has been written because in such situations,
That's exactly the point for us, translators (as you may know, I'm one of the editors of en OWN and a part of translation team of ja OWN as well). If I understand correctly, translation is not considered 'being cited as-is' but a kind of modifications.
So, the question here is, do we considered to be allowed to translate their works and put them on ja OWN?
And, we publish ja OWN on ja.o.o. That is, 'unless expressly otherwise indicated' all the contents in them are considered to be available under GFDL 1.2 license. So, we need to 'expressly otherwise indicate' the license of each article from planet if they are not originally posted to *.opensuse.org sites. And, make things even worse, most of the licenses of those blogs are not clearly expressed. How can we effectively 'expressly otherwise indicate' those licenses? That's why I thought 'it would be prefect for us' if we can ask all the authors of planet to apply GFDL license to their works.
As I mentioned in another post, I believe (and hope) we are 99.99% safe as is. This is the last part of 0.01% concern.
Best,
Le 15/02/2011 09:59, Satoru Matsumoto a écrit :
How can we effectively
'expressly otherwise indicate' those licenses?
giving a link to the original article? I beg it's already done.
That's why I thought 'it
would be prefect for us' if we can ask all the authors of planet to apply GFDL license to their works.
any single licence is better than a bunch
does anybody have to sign something when asking to be agregated? we could add a line to say that the author accepts that the part of the article agregated id GFDL on planet (can have an other licence in an other support)
jdd
Hey,
guys when are you going to realize that the 0,01% your are trying to solve are not worth all this effort? :)
Henne
Le 15/02/2011 12:07, Henne Vogelsang a écrit :
Hey,
guys when are you going to realize that the 0,01% your are trying to solve are not worth all this effort? :)
free software world also give much value to such things (sometime too much IMHO), so we have to fix it. Once done we shouldn't have to discuss it again for years.
Do you remember the times where SuSE was said non-free? the FUD about Novell<->Microsoft?
that's life :-((
jdd
Hi,
On 15.02.2011 12:44, jdd wrote:
Le 15/02/2011 12:07, Henne Vogelsang a écrit :
guys when are you going to realize that the 0,01% your are trying to solve are not worth all this effort? :)
free software world also give much value to such things (sometime too much IMHO)
That's why it's okay to talk about the licensing of the content on our web-pages. But it's rather pointless to talk about re-licensing of content aggregated on the planet or cited in the weekly newsletter...
Henne
Am 15/02/11 14:10, schrieb Henne Vogelsang:
Hi,
On 15.02.2011 12:44, jdd wrote:
Le 15/02/2011 12:07, Henne Vogelsang a écrit :
guys when are you going to realize that the 0,01% your are trying to solve are not worth all this effort? :)
free software world also give much value to such things (sometime too much IMHO)
That's why it's okay to talk about the licensing of the content on our web-pages. But it's rather pointless to talk about re-licensing of content aggregated on the planet or cited in the weekly newsletter...
Henne
+1
And I would guess in this thread are many aspects mixed together (outspoken and hidden; technical, social, historical, personal, legal). I know that probably all is connected and maybe one caused each other.
But my idea would be that we would try to separate the problems a bit from each other (in different threads?).
E.G: Against the fear/threat of being (with or without effort) sued for making the openSUSE Weekly News I would have those points in mind: - Asking the original authors - No full repetition of hole articles nor big parts of them - More indirect citing (telling in the own words) - ?Maybe a bit more concentration on issues of openSUSE? - Asking others what they think about the way that the openSUSE Weekly News are made. - Protection for the ones that give effort to the openSUSE community
The least point is in my view at least worth a different thread. Maybe as an part of the (planned?) discussion about possible goals of the unborn openSUSE foundation/legal person for the community? Compare: Henne on http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Foundation with http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Foundation/Topics
By-laws
* Objective of the Foundation o Moderator: henne o Status : Topic is now open for mailing list discussions o Results :
Martin (pistazienfresser)
Hi,
I really appreciate your answers and comments.
pistazienfresser (see profile) wrote:
Am 15/02/11 14:10, schrieb Henne Vogelsang:
Hi,
On 15.02.2011 12:44, jdd wrote:
Le 15/02/2011 12:07, Henne Vogelsang a écrit :
guys when are you going to realize that the 0,01% your are trying to solve are not worth all this effort? :)
free software world also give much value to such things (sometime too much IMHO)
That's why it's okay to talk about the licensing of the content on our web-pages. But it's rather pointless to talk about re-licensing of content aggregated on the planet or cited in the weekly newsletter...
Henne, the percentage is about the possibility of whether we will be sued or not. Whether we are compliant or not is yet another question. And yes, you might be right, if we need to think ONLY about English OWN.
If you, or any other responsible persons, will answer 'Yes' to my question,
Do we considered to be allowed to translate their works and put them on ja OWN?
I don't need to ask the same question again and again anymore. What I want is, an answer such as 'Yes, you do. However, in case the author call on you to halt translating, respect the author's will and right.'
The suspicion that our work may not be compliant will disturb us. We, contributors always want to be proud of our work. ;-)
And I would guess in this thread are many aspects mixed together (outspoken and hidden; technical, social, historical, personal, legal). I know that probably all is connected and maybe one caused each other.
But my idea would be that we would try to separate the problems a bit from each other (in different threads?).
E.G: Against the fear/threat of being (with or without effort) sued for making the openSUSE Weekly News I would have those points in mind:
- Asking the original authors
- No full repetition of hole articles nor big parts of them
- More indirect citing (telling in the own words)
For handling articles from external sites, your comment is right to the point. But at the same time, those require much more time and English skill and cannot be done only by current OWN team.
- ?Maybe a bit more concentration on issues of openSUSE?
- Asking others what they think about the way that the openSUSE Weekly
News are made.
To discuss those issues, I've already started other threads on -marketing list, but unfortunately, there weren't so many persons who were willing to involved in the discussions. :-( http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-marketing/2011-01/msg00275.html http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-marketing/2011-01/msg00276.html
Giving up handling articles, of which licenses aren't clear, may be the easiest solution for this problem. But what we wish is, providing good information and news which readers really want to read.
- Protection for the ones that give effort to the openSUSE community
The least point is in my view at least worth a different thread. Maybe as an part of the (planned?) discussion about possible goals of the unborn openSUSE foundation/legal person for the community?
Indeed.
Best,
On Wednesday February 16 2011 02:31:18 Satoru Matsumoto wrote: <snip />
Do we considered to be allowed to translate their works and put them on ja OWN?
I don't need to ask the same question again and again anymore. What I want is, an answer such as 'Yes, you do. However, in case the author call on you to halt translating, respect the author's will and right.'
That should be understood anyways.
Hey,
On 02/16/2011 02:31 AM, Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
pistazienfresser (see profile) wrote:
Am 15/02/11 14:10, schrieb Henne Vogelsang:
On 15.02.2011 12:44, jdd wrote:
Le 15/02/2011 12:07, Henne Vogelsang a écrit :
guys when are you going to realize that the 0,01% your are trying to solve are not worth all this effort? :)
free software world also give much value to such things (sometime too much IMHO)
That's why it's okay to talk about the licensing of the content on our web-pages. But it's rather pointless to talk about re-licensing of content aggregated on the planet or cited in the weekly newsletter...
Henne, the percentage is about the possibility of whether we will be sued or not.
Let me tell you a secret. You can always get sued :) Contracts are a matter of civil law (compensation for the injured party) and not criminal law (punishment of the breaching party). It only takes someone who thinks you breached the contract you had with them to get sued. The compensation is what is tried in court.
I would guess in this case, citing or translating of original work published on the internet which is licensed or not, the risk of getting sued is very, very low because there is no real damage involved and the involved parties are not hostile to you in any way.
BTW this risk isn't really a relative one you can express in percentage. If you want to express risks in percentages you need also to define the actions that differ. For instance it's 0.7% more likely to get sued if you re-publish artwork then if you don't. Or the risk of getting sued is 730% higher if you print ja-OWN in a magazine and sell it. The risk-factor for getting sued if you publish ja-OWN is actually a very complicated calculation with a lot of determinants...
And yes, you might be right, if we need to think ONLY about English OWN.
This is the same all over the world.
If you, or any other responsible persons, will answer 'Yes' to my question,
Do we considered to be allowed to translate their works and put them on ja OWN?
I don't need to ask the same question again and again anymore. What I want is, an answer such as 'Yes, you do. However, in case the author call on you to halt translating, respect the author's will and right.'
You think that someone else than you, who creates the ja-OWN, is responsible for it? I'm sorry but this is not the case. You can ask everyone's opinion on a matter like this but you don't have to seek anyone’s(!) approval. openSUSE has no overall responsible persons. Just individuals that are responsible for what they do.
Maybe it helps you if I state my opinion a bit more clearly then a snippy once sentence answer to a long mail thread. Here we go:
You are fine and you worry way too much about the legal aspects of this. The risk involved is minimal. Remember your goal: You want to inform people of whats going on in the openSUSE Project. What you do currently is keeping you from reaching this goal.
Henne
Hi all,
I'm a member of ja-OWN team so I have read this thread with deep interest, but little bit difficult to something to say in my English.
However, please let me say little words. Here's my really personal feeling, forgive me.
It's so sad to read the Henne's mail.
Yes, I had choose to contribute OWN myself, it's my decision. So I should take some risk with the decision.
But getting sued and in the court is too high risk than I ever thought. In openSUSE community, contributors are not fellows? No one save me if I'll be in such situation? Everyone knows a basic point of risk management. We have to consider two factors of risk: possibility and threat. If possibility is very low (0.01%) but threat is really serious, we shouldn't do, So in this case, I have to quit to translate current "risky" OWN. Of course ja-team can make another OWN, but...
Anyway, sorry, I have never used openSUSE. I always use Ubuntu and Oracle Solaris (it might be overwritten by OpenIndiana).
So, why I'm in ja-OWN team? Because I love "freedom of choice." I'm happy with good distros/OSes, good developers and good communities. I had thought openSUSE might be one of good distro and community. so I had wanted to contribute. I had believed such contribution let us success of whole of Linux.
But right now, I can't trust your community is really "good" to spend my spare time with legal risks.
I hope openSUSE community is worth to spare my time, but ATM I need a time to think.
Thanks, and sorry about bad English ;)
Le 16/02/2011 17:16, Naruhiko Ogasawara a écrit :
But getting sued and in the court is too high risk than I ever thought.
you can be sued in court for any reason. A people that think you distrubed him, the father of your wife, even your mom may ask you money. All these events are extremely unlikely and I sincerely hope you'll never have such problem, but I see similar thing in the news paper any day!
the risk you are sued for openSUSE is of that level. And, of course, any people here will try to help you (including financially if ever this could be necessary)
don't fear too much, you could be obliged to close yourself inside your home :-))
jdd
Hi,
you can be sued in court for any reason. (...)
Yes, you are almost right. My point is if I can *recognize* the risk when I do something, I should remove it before do that, or quit. Underlying risks are not problem.
My hobby is running rivers in kayak. If there is a really tough rapid and I might be flipped or swim 50% possibility, but no hazard in downstream, I can try. There is another rapid, seems easy, 99% success, but swimming might cause heavy injury or death of me, I can't try.
ATM the risk is not underlying, already recognized. That's why I have to change ja-OWN way or quit the team.
Thanks,
Le 16/02/2011 18:07, Naruhiko Ogasawara a écrit :
ATM the risk is not underlying, already recognized. That's why I have to change ja-OWN way or quit the team.
what is the risk on our subject?
being sued is not a risk, it's at most an annoyance. the risk is to have to pay some money.
for a court to condamn you to pay money, it must be a recognised fault causing damage.
I don't see this happen on that subject
jdd
Hey,
On 16.02.2011 18:07, Naruhiko Ogasawara wrote:
you can be sued in court for any reason. (...)
ATM the risk is not underlying, already recognized. That's why I have to change ja-OWN way or quit the team.
I thought we have established that, to speak in your terms, you are sitting in your kayak on dry land and the nearest river is 100km away. Now because of the risk that you might slip, after your dry-kayaking session, in the shower and drown in the pool around the plughole you stop kayaking and rather do biking? Sorry I don't get it.
Henne
Hi,
I thought we have established that, to speak in your terms, you are sitting in your kayak on dry land and the nearest river is 100km away. Now because of the risk that you might slip, after your dry-kayaking session, in the shower and drown in the pool around the plughole you stop kayaking and rather do biking? Sorry I don't get it.
Sorry I couldn't cover all of discussion, but if OWN's licensing issue is like as a dry-land kayaking, why Board / Novell can't handle this? It's very easy, isn't it?
Yes you have your opinion, and I have my concern. I need to rest (right now 2:38a.m. JST) and how I should do that.
Thanks,
On Thu, 17 Feb 2011 02:39:08 +0900, Naruhiko Ogasawara wrote:
I thought we have established that, to speak in your terms, you are sitting in your kayak on dry land and the nearest river is 100km away. Now because of the risk that you might slip, after your dry-kayaking session, in the shower and drown in the pool around the plughole you stop kayaking and rather do biking? Sorry I don't get it.
Sorry I couldn't cover all of discussion, but if OWN's licensing issue is like as a dry-land kayaking, why Board / Novell can't handle this? It's very easy, isn't it?
I think what Henne is trying to say is that there's a point at which you reach diminishing returns when it comes to eliminating risk.
You (or someone) say that it's 99.9% risk-free, so now you're trying to address the 0.1% risk that you perceive as remaining.
But there comes a point where it doesn't really make sense to continue trying to reduce the risk because the effort to do so takes increasingly more and more time to effect any difference.
The questions that I would ask are these:
1. Has anyone actually been subject to legal action for re-purposing/ translating material that is being offered to an open source community by the members of that community?
2. What are the odds that, if someone objects to their content being re- purposed, that a simple "I don't want that being redistributed or translated, please take it down." "OK" discussion doesn't resolve it.
3. What are the odds that, if that type of interaction doesn't take place, that an actual judge in an actual court of law somewhere in the world will actually not look at the case and say "Really? You brought THIS to me because you couldn't work it out yourselves?" *and* that the lawyers getting involved would actually agree that the issue couldn't be mediated.
By using the dry land kayaking example, Henne is trying to explain that you are trying to solve a problem that has such a small chance of ever happening that it doesn't make sense to even continue to pursue it.
Life is full of risk. Risks should be mitigated as much as reasonably possible, but you will never completely remove risk from your life. That doesn't mean that it's not worth trying to reasonably reduce risk, but what it does mean is that one has to have a good sense of where to draw the line when it comes to deciding that the risk has been mitigated enough.
Is there a specific circumstance where something has happened that has caused you to be so concerned about this potential issue that has made you afraid to move forward with doing what you're doing because of an actual legal threat/challenge that's been put forth?
I'm willing to concede that I don't know your personal circumstances, but if I were a contributor of content that you wanted to translate, I'd want to have a reason for agreeing to a license that maybe wasn't my first choice (not saying whether it is or not, this is a hypothetical) other than "I'm afraid there's a 0.1% chance that someone somewhere might sue me at some point in the future".
To me and based on my own experiences, that seems extremely paranoid, and the paranoia of one individual who might be tasked with translating something I might right in the future isn't enough reason for me to decide to use the license that the translator prefers because of that very small chance that the translator might possibly be sued at some indeterminate point in the future.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand things, license enforcement can (and does) get enforced differently in different jurisdictions. As such, EULAs (for example) are enforced differently in different parts of the United States, and they tend to be written in such a way as to state that in the event that a provision in the license is unenforceable in the jurisdiction, that provision is voided but the rest of the license agreement is still in force.
So let's say we end up agreeing that GFDL (or CC, or whatever) is the license to use. Are we then going to go further down the rabbit hole and start narrowly parsing elements of the agreed-upon license and how it would hypothetically be enforced in each possible jurisdiction around the world where an individual might be sued for translating content provided by one person in one part of the world?
That seems to be the direction this is heading - because to my view, we've already passed the point of "addressing a reasonable risk", but again, maybe my circumstances are different than yours, and you've actually been threatened with a lawsuit over some translation work you've already done. I don't know, but if that has happened, that would be a useful data point to include in the discussion, because otherwise, at least for my part, I can't see why this is even a topic being discussed.
Jim
Jim Henderson wrote:
I think what Henne is trying to say is that there's a point at which you reach diminishing returns when it comes to eliminating risk.
You (or someone) say that it's 99.9% risk-free, so now you're trying to address the 0.1% risk that you perceive as remaining.
But there comes a point where it doesn't really make sense to continue trying to reduce the risk because the effort to do so takes increasingly more and more time to effect any difference.
If we just need to focus whether we can be sued or not, I agree with you.
However, if we focus whether we are really compliant or not, we need to be more deliberate.
One of the OWN-ja team members told me his concern: if we, as a part of openSUSE project, are not compliant, we may destroy the credibility of the project itself. We need to avoid the risk.
I found his concern is reasonable.
Just imagine the case:
You are now driving a car and going to go through a cross walk. The stoplight has turned red. But as far as you can see, no one is going to cross at the cross walk. ... What will you do, if your car is Geeko-painted so that everyone can realize that the car is owned by openSUSE?
You may rarely cause a fatal accident even if you drive through a red light in such a case. But imagine how people would feel if they watch you ignore a red light.
I have to admit, we can't be 100% compliant in our real lives. To be honest, I would sometimes ignore a red light in such a case, IF I DRIVE MY OWN CAR, because I'm exactly the one who have to take personal responsibility in such a case. But I shouldn't, IF I DRIVE A GEEKO-PAINTED CAR.
Having a lot of fun is very very important. I definately agree. But at the same time, being as compliant as possible is also important.
If our work is not fun, how can I call for others to be engaged in contributing? However, if our work is not compliant, how can I call for others to be engaged in contributing?
What we OWN-ja team are now seeking is, the efficient way for providing worthful and interesting information to readers, and at the same time for being as compliant as possible so that (potential) contributors can help us without any concern (or, at least, so that they can help us with confidence). Please do not forget, what I'm asking you in this thread is, to help us find out the better way both for meeting readers request and being as compliant as possible. Do you really think this effort is worthless and 'What you do currently is keeping you from reaching this goal'?
In addition, if we have to tell the persons who are willing to help us 'you have to assume the risks, because openSUSE has no overall responsible persons to help you', do you think they will be motivated? If I can't tell them 'do whatever you want and have a lot of fun. As long as you respect and support the Guiding Principles and act in a sensible manner, openSUSE community will always stand by you!', I can no longer ask others to join our community.
Best,
Le 17/02/2011 04:25, Satoru Matsumoto a écrit :
You may rarely cause a fatal accident even if you drive through a red light in such a case. But imagine how people would feel if they watch you ignore a red light.
if you think you can cross a red light in any condition, I certainly wouldn't backup you...
honest, I would sometimes ignore a red light in such a case, IF I DRIVE MY OWN CAR,
please don't. You don't have to interpret the law by yourself, we are no more in far west...
because I'm exactly the one who have to take personal
responsibility in such a case. But I shouldn't, IF I DRIVE A GEEKO-PAINTED CAR.
where is the difference if nobody is to see you?
In addition, if we have to tell the persons who are willing to help us 'you have to assume the risks, because openSUSE has no overall responsible persons to help you', do you think they will be motivated? If I can't tell them 'do whatever you want and have a lot of fun. As
this don't worrie me. That's what an adult person have to do any time anywhere. do not always seek for your father
sorry to say so, but your arguments are pretty dumb
Please, rest a moment, go make some sport and calmdown.
I'm sure all this is purely hypotetical and you will never do that
jdd
Hey Satoru,
On 17.02.2011 04:25, Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
If I can't tell them 'do whatever you want and have a lot of fun. As long as you respect and support the Guiding Principles and act in a sensible manner, openSUSE community will always stand by you!', I can no longer ask others to join our community.
You are the ja-OWN leader. You make it happen, you speak for it, you organize the contributors around it, its your thing! That means you are the authority. You are the openSUSE Project. Go out and take decisions or speak for the Project. You don't need to seek approval from anyone. You have earned that right by relentlessly driving the OWN and ja-OWN. No one ever questioned your authority so don't question it yourself :)
If you are still asking for recognition for yourself and for your efforts from everyone else just look at the furious attempts in this thread to convince you that you are a OWN leader, that people will always do whatever they can to help you with anything and that OWN and ja-OWN are a really important effort for this project.
Satoru you are one of the important and responsible people of the openSUSE project and all the openSUSE Project is about is working together and standing by each other at any time.
Henne
On Thu, 17 Feb 2011 12:25:48 +0900, Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
Jim Henderson wrote:
I think what Henne is trying to say is that there's a point at which you reach diminishing returns when it comes to eliminating risk.
You (or someone) say that it's 99.9% risk-free, so now you're trying to address the 0.1% risk that you perceive as remaining.
But there comes a point where it doesn't really make sense to continue trying to reduce the risk because the effort to do so takes increasingly more and more time to effect any difference.
If we just need to focus whether we can be sued or not, I agree with you.
However, if we focus whether we are really compliant or not, we need to be more deliberate.
That makes more sense to me, thanks for the clarification.
Basically, you just want to/need to do your due diligence, and that's what you're trying to do here.
Jim
Naruhiko Ogasawara wrote:
I thought we have established that, to speak in your terms, you are sitting in your kayak on dry land and the nearest river is 100km away. Now because of the risk that you might slip, after your dry-kayaking session, in the shower and drown in the pool around the plughole you stop kayaking and rather do biking? Sorry I don't get it.
Sorry I couldn't cover all of discussion, but if OWN's licensing issue is like as a dry-land kayaking, why Board / Novell can't handle this? It's very easy, isn't it?
This issue has 2 elements. Some just concern whether we can be sued or not, while others are worrying about whether we are really compliant or not.
Focusing the former element, most of you think that the possibility of being sued in this case is extremely low. So do I. We may be claimed by authors, but rarely sued as long as we respond sincerely to the claim. I'm sure Naruhiko also is well aware of that.
But if I understand correctly, what actually disappointed him is the stance of openSUSE project.
Each contributor has a possibility to violate some laws or licenses as a result of her contribution and be claimed even if she is devoid of malice.
In such a case, will openSUSE project just say to her 'openSUSE has no overall responsible persons. Just individuals that are responsible for what they do.' instead of 'Don't worry. We, openSUSE project, will work together to solve the trouble which you face.'?
Cool. I bet no one will take a needless risk anymore. How can people believe that openSUSE is worthy enough to support?
What contributors really want is not a guarantee by the project, but a feeling of ease or trust 'I'm not walking alone. When I face any trouble, I'll be helped by others, as long as I help others when they fase troubles.'
I really hope you will understand what I mean.
Best,
On Wednesday, February 16, 2011 06:54:54 pm Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
What contributors really want is not a guarantee by the project, but a feeling of ease or trust 'I'm not walking alone. When I face any trouble, I'll be helped by others, as long as I help others when they fase troubles.'
What guarantee can be given by project that is not legal entity?
On the other hand, if someone with enough financial coverage stands behind contributors with such guarantee, don't you think that it will actually attract those seeking revenue from law suits? Lightning rod with a good ground is more likely to be hit.
It would be nice if you, or anyone else, can point to the source of information that made you think about this.
I. Am 17/02/11 03:48, schrieb Rajko M.:
On Wednesday, February 16, 2011 06:54:54 pm Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
What contributors really want is not a guarantee by the project, but a feeling of ease or trust 'I'm not walking alone. When I face any trouble, I'll be helped by others, as long as I help others when they fase troubles.'
What guarantee can be given by project that is not legal entity?
That is why I surgested to split the discussion to a possible gain[1] of the unborn foundation[2]
On the other hand, if someone with enough financial coverage stands behind contributors with such guarantee, don't you think that it will actually attract those seeking revenue from law suits?
If I look at the many costly de:Abmahnungen (~warnings/call to order) that private persons or small trader get from lawyers in Germany for using illegal contracts of annex or trademarks of others on one hand (e. g. on ebay) and the big companies using clearly illegal paragraphs for a long time on the other hand - I would doubt it.
The probability that the target could hit back or at least will be able to defend its self seems to me a basic parameter in the calculation of the aggressor, too.
And if there is no legal eternity the aggressor might also think of suing all the participants of the openSUSE community (in German law maybe as a BGB-Gesellschaft/Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts).
II. But I think the discussion has come to the point that the people of the openSUSE Weekly News team (as long as they are represented in this thread) more wanted to act in 'the right way'.
So if they want to publish the openSUSE Weekly News under a (US- or other) Corporate Commons License what do they need?
1. Maybe a green light of the board (was that really the problem jet?).
2. If they want to conclude the (hole?/most parts of the) work of other people the consent of those other persons and maybe also that those persons also publish under the/a CC license. But what can the board do about that? I do not think that the board should try to 'order' other persons to publish under a specific license - they might just act stubborn and publish their work only on their own website and will be no longer willing to let their work be included in the openSUSE Weekly News. So if II.1. is no problem than II.2 should in my mind be handled by the openSUSE Weekly New team on their own.
Just my thoughts about it - without costs and without liability higher than a normal person's thoughts are [2]...).
Regards Martin
[1] This seems to be the first point "Objective of the Foundation" in the agenda on http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Foundation/Topics and the theme of the working paper/ proposal on http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Foundation
[2]or other form of artificial person/legal body/legal person -> this seems to be the second point "The legal form of the foundation" in the argenda on http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Foundation/Topics and the theme of the working paper on http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Foundation_legal_form
[3] See § 675 section II Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch http://dejure.org/gesetze/BGB/675.html (de with decissons) http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_bgb/englisch_bgb.html#BGBengl_000... (en)
Hi Naruhiko,
On 16.02.2011 18:39, Naruhiko Ogasawara wrote:
I thought we have established that, to speak in your terms, you are sitting in your kayak on dry land and the nearest river is 100km away. Now because of the risk that you might slip, after your dry-kayaking session, in the shower and drown in the pool around the plughole you stop kayaking and rather do biking? Sorry I don't get it.
Sorry I couldn't cover all of discussion, but if OWN's licensing issue is like as a dry-land kayaking, why Board / Novell can't handle this? It's very easy, isn't it?
Handle what exactly? How can the Board or Novell help you? Tell me and I'll do my best.
It's very easy, isn't it?
Don't get me wrong. I admire your work and I admire your thinking about licensing. Tell me how I can help you and I will!
I need to rest (right now 2:38a.m. JST) and how I should do that.
I hope that helped :)
Henne
Hi Henne,
Thank you for catching my ball. I'll try to concludes my hope shortly.
Handle what exactly? How can the Board or Novell help you? Tell me and I'll do my best.
Hmm... how can I say that...
Yes I agree that any legal issue of current OWN will possibly not caused (99.99%), but if we got 0.01%? In such situation, I need some help. I don't know exactly what kind of help we needed, but I might not be able to handle all of things alone.
So, about OWN, If Satoru's effort will success, I mean whole of OWN will contains license/copyright clear articles, it is best for me because possibility will become 0.01% to 0%!
It's very easy, isn't it?
It's my fault. I shouldn't bring my kayak ;). What I want is just written above.
Thanks,
Le 17/02/2011 13:58, Naruhiko Ogasawara a écrit :
not be able to handle all of things alone.
at that level, you can ask the board for help :-)
It's my fault. I shouldn't bring my kayak ;).
of course, you could :-), I just regret not to be able to go on board with you :-))
jdd
Le 11/02/2011 18:48, Satoru Matsumoto a écrit :
If we can change, the situation would be much better. That's why I asked in my top post of this thread, "Can we ask Novell to apply CC BY-SA 3.0 license for every content on *.opensuse.org including Wiki?" Only the copyright owner - in this case, Novell - can change the license.
no.
The copyright owner can change the licence *for any new text* but not for any existing. Who can say if some authors won't desagree?
in case of multiple author each one have the licence rights (that's why this licence stuff is so important)
and don't think we don't have to think twice if the cc licence don't have also drawbacks
sad, but true
jdd
jdd wrote:
Le 11/02/2011 18:48, Satoru Matsumoto a écrit :
If we can change, the situation would be much better. That's why I asked in my top post of this thread, "Can we ask Novell to apply CC BY-SA 3.0 license for every content on *.opensuse.org including Wiki?" Only the copyright owner - in this case, Novell - can change the license.
no.
Yes. (Or in German, I should say 'Doch' in this case ;-))
The copyright owner can change the licence *for any new text* but not for any existing. Who can say if some authors won't desagree?
Refer to: http://en.opensuse.org/Terms_of_site#Terms_of_site
Terms of site
ATTENTION: Please read these terms carefully before using this web site. These Terms of Site ("Terms") constitute a legally binding agreement between you, an individual or an entity ("You"), and Novell . Using this web site indicates that you accept these Terms. If you do not accept these Terms, do not use this web site. _Novell may modify all or any part of these Terms from time to time without notice to you._ (...)
That means, only Novell can replace the term
"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."
with
"With the exception of Software, all content on this website is made available under the terms of CC BY-SA unless expressly otherwise indicated."
without notice to contributors.
And if an author can't accept that, the only option for him/her is "If at any time the Terms are no longer acceptable to You, You should immediately cease all use of this web site." as mentioned.
I don't think this would be a good manner, but according to the term, Novell can/may do.
Do I misunderstand?
Best,
Ok people listen something I started the Greek translation and I worked the first issues with only another two persons, generally as I see things I made some serious work and I believe I followed all the rules and if I made a mistake somewhere believe me it was an honest mistake. I did all that because I wanted and still want to help the openSUSE project but I read various legal issues here that I don't understand and to be honest I don't really want to. That conversation is making people like me nervous, I don't want to read any terms carefully and if I do I will probably won't understand them, I am a firefighter,not a lawyer. Please someone explain in two words if it is possible how we should do the translation without having legal problems or any other problems, if that is not possible let me know and I will advise the Greek community to stop the Greek translation and after that it is in Greek peoples hands to decide. This is not in any way a threat to anyone but a logical move since none wants to risk having troubles with the law because he is voluntarily doing work in a project. At least not the people I call for help. I hope you understand my point of view. Kostas
2011/2/11 Satoru Matsumoto helios_reds@gmx.net:
jdd wrote:
Le 11/02/2011 18:48, Satoru Matsumoto a écrit :
If we can change, the situation would be much better. That's why I asked in my top post of this thread, "Can we ask Novell to apply CC BY-SA 3.0 license for every content on *.opensuse.org including Wiki?" Only the copyright owner - in this case, Novell - can change the license.
no.
Yes. (Or in German, I should say 'Doch' in this case ;-))
The copyright owner can change the licence *for any new text* but not for any existing. Who can say if some authors won't desagree?
Refer to: http://en.opensuse.org/Terms_of_site#Terms_of_site
Terms of site
ATTENTION: Please read these terms carefully before using this web site. These Terms of Site ("Terms") constitute a legally binding agreement between you, an individual or an entity ("You"), and Novell . Using this web site indicates that you accept these Terms. If you do not accept these Terms, do not use this web site. _Novell may modify all or any part of these Terms from time to time without notice to you._ (...)
That means, only Novell can replace the term
"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."
with
"With the exception of Software, all content on this website is made available under the terms of CC BY-SA unless expressly otherwise indicated."
without notice to contributors.
And if an author can't accept that, the only option for him/her is "If at any time the Terms are no longer acceptable to You, You should immediately cease all use of this web site." as mentioned.
I don't think this would be a good manner, but according to the term, Novell can/may do.
Do I misunderstand?
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
Hi Kostas,
Kostas Koudaras wrote:
Ok people listen something I started the Greek translation and I worked the first issues with only another two persons, generally as I see things I made some serious work and I believe I followed all the rules and if I made a mistake somewhere believe me it was an honest mistake. I did all that because I wanted and still want to help the openSUSE project but I read various legal issues here that I don't understand and to be honest I don't really want to. That conversation is making people like me nervous, I don't want to read any terms carefully and if I do I will probably won't understand them, I am a firefighter,not a lawyer. Please someone explain in two words if it is possible how we should do the translation without having legal problems or any other problems, if that is not possible let me know and I will advise the Greek community to stop the Greek translation and after that it is in Greek peoples hands to decide. This is not in any way a threat to anyone but a logical move since none wants to risk having troubles with the law because he is voluntarily doing work in a project. At least not the people I call for help. I hope you understand my point of view.
I'm so sorry if I (or this discussion) made you get nervous. :-(
As I wrote in another post, I think '99.99% we are safe, as long as we handle articles from external sites in OWN as is'. What I atempt to do in this thread is, removing the last 0.01% concern. Once we can clarify the license issue, we will be able to publish much more compliant OWN which can be translated without any concern.
It's difficult to explain legal issues 'in two words', but respecting others rights might be the principle of our lives.
You can understand, every author has his/her own right to control how his/her works should be deal with. Of course it would be best, if we can ask permission from copyright owner to draw, translate its work in our OWN each time we want to introduce it. But that cannot be done with current human resources of OWN team.
And I think this matter affects not only OWN, but also whole community activities (that's why I posted this matter to -project list instead of -marketing list).
For example, everyone can build and distribute packages of any softwares via OBS. That means, it is *technically* possible to distribute packages of softwares (for example, commercial applications from vendors such as Microsoft or Adobe or Oracle) which are not allowed to be re-distributed. Whether you like or not, you also have to care the license of others works even if you are not a lawyer. ;-)
Best,
Le 11/02/2011 20:59, Satoru Matsumoto a écrit :
t
these Terms, do not use this web site. _Novell may modify all or any part of these Terms from time to time without notice to you._ (...)
do you mean Novell add some part on top of the GFDL? tricky.
That means, only Novell can replace the term
yes, of course _for future use_
I don't think GFDL allow that anyway (without authors formal consent)
and are you sure cc is a good choice (not evrybody may agree, this should not be changed without much care.
be sure I don't say that to make problems, all the contrary, my goal is to lessen future problems
jdd
Sascha Manns wrote:
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.
ATM we doing so:
- We just using a Article in whole for the Weekly News if the Original
Article is licensed under CC-BY-SA.
- All other Articles who doesn't match this License we just introduce
with 2 or 3 Paragraphs.
Please refer to my another post in this thread. If 'introducing with 2 or 3 Paragraphs' won't cause any problem according to German law, that's not enough (which country's law we should refer to is not yet clear).
In all Cases we linking to the Original Article and we adding $SITE/$AUTHOR before the Title of the Article.
I propose to use this Legalnotice for the Weekly News:
This compilation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (unless expressly otherwise indicated) by the openSUSE Weekly News Team. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons 171 Second Street Suite 300 San Francisco California 94105 USA.
If any Article doesn't match this License we can add the Copyrightnotice of the Original Article on the End of the Newsletter.
Maybe this is a solution?
I don't think just adding the copyright notice is enough, because copyright and license are different things. Who is the copyright owner and which license is applied to the work are on the different layers.
We, Japanese team have added the 'Disclaimer' section to OWN Japanese edition, in which we mention:
"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. See the details at 'Terms of site (English)' page.
openSUSE Weekly News Japanese Edition (hereinafter, "OWN-ja") are edited by OWN-ja team based on openSUSE Weekly News original English Edition and all rights of the articles from external sites are owned by original copyright owners. If you want to re-use the contents in this News, please follow the license of each original work. In addition, all translations in OWN-ja are just referential translations by OWN-ja tean and the correctness of contents and translations are by no means guaranteed."
http://ja.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/161#.E5.85.8D.E8.B2.AC.E4.BA.8B....
I don't think this solves all the problem, but it may be better than nothing. ;-)
Best,
-
Administrator -
Alan Clark -
Bryen M. Yunashko -
Henne Vogelsang -
Holger Hetterich -
jdd -
Jim Henderson -
Jos Poortvliet -
Kostas Koudaras -
Malcolm -
Manu Gupta -
Naruhiko Ogasawara -
Pascal Bleser -
pistazienfresser (see profile) -
Rajko M. -
Sascha 'saigkill' Manns -
Sascha Manns -
Satoru Matsumoto -
Sebastian Kügler -
Stephan Kleine -
Vincent Untz