[Clipart] OO.o Contest and Problems with their license Usage

Jon Phillips jon at rejon.org
Fri Sep 22 10:20:18 PDT 2006


On Thu, 2006-09-21 at 09:37 +0300, Nicu Buculei (OCAL) wrote:
> Jon Phillips wrote:
> > SO, Bryce and I found a major stumbling block with clip art that
> > Sun/OpenOffice.org (because they are really one and the same) is
> > licensing for their contest. Basically, their license, the Public
> > Document License (yes, very easily confused with Public Domain, as I did
> > on the first read) is problematic because it is viral and requires one
> > to relicense any work that includes their clip art or templates to this
> > Public Document License. Here is the email where I brought up the points
> 
> http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/PDL.html
> PDL is a license invented by OOo specifically for documentation.
> I remember what struggles we had at http://oooauthors.org, a project 
> writing documentation for OOo, because the documentation was not 
> released under PDL but under CreativeCommons Attribution, so we had to 
> release under dual license.

Yep, and then the whole JCA (joint copyright) thing is way too much of a
request.

> > to my contact who is sponsoring this contest in an attempt to get them
> > to reconsider and use Public Domain. I am hoping they do this, and if
> > not, I feel a sense of responsibility to write an article discussing the
> > problems and blogging heavy about why this is a unacceptable appraoch
> > for users and artists. I checked out the legal things I talked about
> > with some legal friends of mine (cc), but that is not legal advice (I
> > always have to say that after I say what I did). Thoughts are really
> > great and questions as well as where to go next....Anyway, here is my
> > email:
> 
> Sorry, but I don't fully agree. You compare PDL with LGPL and argue 
> against it because LGPL is a license meant for source code and not content.
> As I can see, PDL talks about "Original Documentation" and "Initial 
> Writer". But also I can't see how clipart or templates can be considered 
> documentation...

No, I'm talking about the OO.o clip art/templates contest which muddles
the two and says one must submit their templates and/or clip art under
either LGPL or PDL. It is their mistake, hence why I am bringing them
both up distinctly.

Jon

> 
-- 
Jon Phillips

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