On 2011-02-14 11:17:38 (+0900), Satoru Matsumoto
Pascal Bleser wrote:
On 2011-02-11 23:37:23 (+0530), Manu Gupta
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
--
-o) Pascal Bleser