Packaging Guide License

Sun Dec 4 02:04:47 UTC 2005

On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 22:21 -0200, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> On 3 Dec, 2005, at 3:50 PM, Jordan Mantha wrote:
> >
> > Matthew East wrote:
> >>
> >> On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 19:35 -0800, Jordan Mantha wrote:
> > ...
> >>>    After a discussion with mpt and Madpilot on #ubuntu-doc I have 
> >>> become concerned about the license for the Ubuntu Packaging Guide. I 
> >>> took the guide from a doc done by Ankur Kotwal for the MOTU. The 
> >>> .deb package has a GPL license so assume that the doc is GPL'd. This 
> >>> means that the Ubuntu Packaging Guide needs to be GPL'd. I believe 
> >>> that it was GPL'd because it includes quite  a bit of material from 
> >>> the Debian New Maintainer's Guide. However, it also had quite a bit 
> >>> from the Ubuntu wiki (which is not GPL ?). At this point I am 
> >>> wondering what the best way to go is.
> 
> I'm not a lawyer, but this seems fairly simple:
> 1.  stop distributing the Ubuntu Packaging Guide, for as long as you
>      cannot legally do so;
> 2.  contact each contributor to the relevant wiki pages and ask them to
>      license their contributions under the GPL;
> 3.  remove all material for which step 2 was unsuccessful;
> 4.  resume distributing the Guide.

It is not illegal to distribute it, in my opinion. When someone posts to
a wiki, it is really strongly arguable that they don't retain any
copyrights in the material they post. It's a collaborative resource,
everyone can edit each page, and everything about it just shouts "I have
no interest in what happens to the material I post!" For this reason,
even though there is no express licence on the wiki, I believe that it
is not a problem to use material from it.

I also think this is not something to get too excited about, for two
reasons. First, the likelihood of anyone actually minding about the use
of their material is fairly low (not zero, but it will be rare). For
this reason I'd suggest a different approach to existing material on the
wiki (see much further below).

Secondly, in any event, if people did retain rights in the material
(which I don't think they did), I can't see that they are suffering any
loss (we are not profiting by using the material, and they are not
losing profit by us using it): that would make any potential legal claim
against us an extraordinary waste of time and money.

Obviously, if people aren't persuaded by this, we can undertake the
laborious task of contacting everyone who ever edited the pages from
which the material is taken, but I'm not doing it :D

> >>> Can the Ubuntu Packaging Guide be GPL'd considering the wiki 
> >>> content? Should the whole thing be rewritten? I am not opposed to 
> >>> that but it would be some work.
> >>
> >> No, I think that is absolutely fine. The wiki is a free for all 
> >> (IMO). I think the GPL makes sense. We're working on making the wiki 
> >> licence a bit clearer: see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WikiLicensing
> 
> Smokey, you're about to enter a world of pain. Here's the proposed 
> license from that page:
> >
> > You are free:
> >
> >  * to copy, modify, distribute, display and make commercial use of 
> > material which you find on this wiki
> >
> > Under the following conditions:
> >
> >  * You must identify that the material came from the Ubuntu wiki, and 
> > provide a URL to the wiki.
> >  * If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may 
> > distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this 
> > one.
> >  * For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the 
> > licence terms of this work.
> 
> This license would make wiki material unnecessarily difficult to use 
> for Ubuntu derivatives, and would continue to make it unusable for all 
> other Documentation Team work.
> 
> *   It wouldn't be usable in documents licensed under the GNU GPL,
>      because the advertising clause is incompatible with the GPL (cf.
>      <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html>). So the problem with the
>      Ubuntu Packaging Guide could happen again.
> 
> *   It wouldn't be usable in documents licensed under the GNU FDL,
>      because while the first and third license conditions appear to be
>      compatible with the FDL, the second condition clashes with the
>      FDL's requirement to "Include an unaltered copy of this License".
> 
> *   It wouldn't be usable in documents licensed under the CC BY-SA,
>      for an equivalent reason as for the FDL.
> 
> *   Every single page on the Edubuntu wiki would be in violation of the
>      license, because the Edubuntu wiki is a mirror of the Ubuntu wiki,
>      but it doesn't display the URL of the Ubuntu wiki. This could be
>      fixed, but it would look silly.

All these seem to be good points.

> I think the simplest way to make wiki material easily usable in all of 
> these situations would be to require wiki contributors to release all 
> new contributions under the public domain.

Yes, I think you're right. Let's simplify matters and cut the
conditions.

> > I might be showing my lack of licensing knowledge here but doesn't a 
> > lack of license mean that it cannot be used since a license would 
> > describe circumstances where you can take material not when you can't.
> 
> Indeed. As I understand it, if contributors don't accept their work 
> being put under any particular license (like there is when you edit a 
> Wikipedia page, for example), everyone has a copyright on their own 
> contributions, and nobody can be assumed to have given permission for 
> their contributions to be used anywhere other than the wiki. So without 
> explicit permission from the relevant contributors, you can't put stuff 
> from the wiki into any other documents, no matter *what* license those 
> other documents are under.

See my answer on this above.

> > I think that this was bounced around some time ago for the wiki and 
> > forums perhaps (I can't remember right now). I am fine with GPLing the 
> > Packaging Guide but it seems like that would be sort of going against 
> > the flow of using dual GFDL and CC-BY-SA license.
> > ...
> 
> If it was derived from a GPLed document, you have no choice but to keep 
> it GPLed, unless you get permission from all the previous contributors.
> 
> So how do we get out of this mess? I suggest:
> 1.  Hack the Ubuntu wiki so that Moin knows, for each page, whether it
>      is copyright or public domain (even after renaming). All existing
>      pages are copyright, because you can't change them retrospectively.
> 2.  Put text in the wiki editing form such that contributors accept
>      their work is under the public domain.
> 3.  Flip the switch so Moin recognizes that all new pages are under the
>      public domain.
> That way, you still won't be able to use the majority of the wiki in 
> other documents, but the proportion you *can* use will steadily 
> increase over time.

I agree with 2. because that will certainly clarify things for the
future, but with regard to the "restrospective" aspect, as I said before
I think this an overly legalistic approach. What I'd propose is to
assume that the material on the wiki (existing and future) is usable
without problem and in the public domain. We try and make this really
clear on the wiki (2. above, and maybe even more) and announce to the
community as widely as possible. Then, if people have specific
complaints about material, we can be sensitive to them and discuss
things to try and resolve any issues.

Matt
-- 
mdke at ubuntu.com
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF
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