On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 20:17:35 +0300 Tommi Vainikainen wrote: > Hello members of debian-legal,
Hi! > > It isn't currently well known that Debian website's license is Open > Publication License, which has been judged to be non-free, and > therefore needs to be changed. Indeed. > > Currently web pages are "Copyright © 1997-2005 SPI" and license terms > linking to Open Publication license are available at > <URL: http://www.de.debian.org/license >. However SPI has not been > collecting any paper work to transfer copyrights like FSF does, and > probably many contributors do not even know about that their work is > automatically copyrighted by SPI. > > So basically there is two questions: > > Does missing paperwork create a problem? I think it does, unfortunately. Each copyright holder should be tracked, contacted and asked for a signed copyright assignment paper. Then SPI will be able to relicense the website. A less difficult solution is avoiding copyright assignements and simply asking for a license change: each copyright holder should be tracked, contacted and asked to agree with the relicensing. The latter solution is (relatively) easier, since contributors must be tracked and contacted anyway, but a permission to relicense can be obtained via e-mail, while a copyright assignment must be done in a written and signed (deadtree) paper, AFAIK. > > And what would be good license for Debians web pages? (This is about > content, the scripts used in generation are GNU GPL or otherwise > freely licensed.) My recommendations are: GNU GPL v2 ---------- (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.txt) if copyleft is desired Expat a.k.a. MIT ---------------- (http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt) if copyleft is not perceived as important and/or maximum license compatibility is desired > > Because copyright is currently claimed by SPI Inc, and SPI's board > meeting is coming rather soon, I brought this issue to SPI's > secretarys attention, but SPI board would appreciate some suggestion > what they should decide about license change. Good, thanks for working on this issue! > > I've Cc'ed the bug report about the issue, but Mail-followups does not > contain bug report. Add it if needed, please. Added. -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) ...................................................................... Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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