Consider adding license information to freedesktop.org wiki contents?

Thomas Kluyver thomas at kluyver.me.uk
Sat May 5 17:50:21 UTC 2018


I have found where the Moinmoin data is located (/srv/www.freedesktop.org/moin/data on annarchy.freedesktop.org). Could someone add me (takluyver) to the www-data group so I can investigate it further? Or you could make all that data world-readable.

On Sat, May 5, 2018, at 6:00 PM, Thomas Kluyver wrote:
> I also stole about 30 sheets of toilet paper from a hotel a few weeks 
> ago. Please, someone explain property law to me!
> 
> More seriously, it's clear that my proposed solution is not going to 
> fly, because we're taking copyright Very Seriously. Since we are taking 
> copyright Very Seriously, there are two problems:
> 
> 1. No-one can copy code samples from the wiki, or redistribute 
> specifications or anything, because they don't have a license. This is 
> what the thread was originally about, and it seems like a pretty major 
> flaw for a body making interoperability specifications for open source 
> software.
> 2. Whoever runs freedesktop.org is violating all the contributors' 
> copyright by redistributing the content they created, because you're not 
> asked to grant a license when you edit the wiki.
> 
> Is anybody interested in fixing this? Do we even have a record of who 
> edited what before the wiki was migrated to its current form?
> 
> If you think we can live with the ambiguous copyright situation as it 
> is, then you weren't really taking copyright law Very Seriously, you 
> were just picking an argument with me for trying to suggest a solution.
> 
> Thomas
> 
> On Sat, May 5, 2018, at 3:29 PM, Thomas U. Grüttmüller wrote:
> > 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
> > _______________________________________________
> > xdg mailing list
> > xdg at lists.freedesktop.org
> > https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
> _______________________________________________
> xdg mailing list
> xdg at lists.freedesktop.org
> https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg


More information about the xdg mailing list