Consider adding license information to freedesktop.org wiki contents?

Thomas U. Grüttmüller sloyment at gmx.net
Sat May 5 14:29:53 UTC 2018


On 13.04.2018 13:11, Thomas Kluyver wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 13, 2018, at 11:48 AM, Bastien Nocera wrote:>
>> This isn't how copyright works, sorry.
> 
> Thanks, I was aware of this. No, it doesn't strictly adhere to 'how copyright works', but realistically, people who contribute to a freely available wiki about open source software are not going to sue you for putting an open source license on it.

People might change their view on free software.

People might also die, and their rights will be inherited by their heirs.

> It's not even clear what they'd sue for: you can't lose revenue on wiki content that is already accessible at zero cost.

It does not matter. Copyright violation is a criminal offense, just like 
trespassing or slander. It does not matter for it to be forbidden, if 
the victim suffers financial damage or not.

> As I said, this is something I have seen projects do. The Ubuntu wiki underwent relicensing in 2011, for instance, with the wording in an email:
> "In the absence of a substantial number of objections, this change will be made to the Ubuntu wiki after approximately one month."

This is dangerous for re-users of the work, because they rely on the 
license, but the license is invalid. So, without knowing, the re-user 
will do a copyright violation and might be sued.

Thomas


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