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

[Jon Phillips]

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
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:



One of the ways you could really help make this project more community
driven is to require all submissions for this OO.o project to be
declared Public Domain. 

On the site's contest rules, there is a statement that submissions must
use the SUN specific license, Public Document License, which looks like
a SUN re-branding of the LGPL license, which is meant for source code
and not CONTENT, unlike a Creative Commons license (which is for text,
audio, video, etc). This is counter to simply releasing content into the
public domain, like Open Clip Art Library does so a project like this
can use the Open Clip Art Library graphics on this page without
problems: http://documentation.openoffice.org/ Basically, declaring the
clip into the Public Domain (not a license, but a declaration), one
allows ANYONE to use the clip art and/or templates.

It is very unfortunate this contest is using the SUN-only Public
Document License, because yet again it confused the public with Public
Domain, which is the dominate declaration for clip art files and
basically WON'T let anyone use this OO.o clipart and templates outside
of software that is Public Document License/LGPL...so its locked into
the OpenOffice.org domain because nobody else uses Public Document
License outside of SUN.

So to sum it up:

1.) LGPL is meant for Source Code (and thus it is not engineered to
stand up in a court of law for clip art and templates) and thus is not
valid for non-software.

Here is a snippet to prove this point from the LGPL license: "0. This
License Agreement applies to any software library or other program which
contains a notice placed by the copyright holder or other authorized
party saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Lesser
General Public License (also called "this License"). Each licensee is
addressed as "you"."

2.) The Sun-only Public Document License encumbers submissions so that
they can only be used in files that are public document licensed and/or
basically Sun projects. So in effect, by using a clip art or template
under this license and with Sun, one must also license their document
under this Public Document License, something that is very restrictive
and most people will not understand. I can discuss this more as well, as
it is closest to the Creative Commons BY-SA (viral attribution license).
Basically, the Sun-only Public Document License is restricting
submissions to OpenOffice.org only. 

Proof of this viral nature of the Public Document License is here: "The
Modifications which You create or to which You contribute are governed
by the terms of this License, including without limitation Section 2.2
("Contributor Grant"). The Documentation may be distributed only under
the terms of this License or a future version of this License released
in accordance with Section 5.0 ("Versions of the License"), and You must
include a copy of this License with every copy of the Documentation You
distribute. You may not offer or impose any terms that alter or restrict
the applicable version of this License or the recipients' rights
hereunder. However, You may include an additional document offering the
additional rights described in Section 3.5 ("Required Notices")."

It is probably too late to get this changed, but is one major way this
contest could still work with the community. Anyhow, basically, I think
this legal hurdle is a major stumbling block and hopefully you can all
address it with the people you are working with at SUN over this
project. I strongly urge you all to change the licensing to a non-viral
license and hopefully to requiring artists to release to the public
domain.

I wanted to discuss with you first before I proceed with opening this up
to the larger community because this Public Document License basically
hurts the users and the larger community and I need to make sure Open
Clip Art Library artists know about this, because if anyone submits to
this contest, they cannot submit to our project nor any other project
unless they use this OpenOffice.org-only license.

Jon
-- 
Jon Phillips

San Francisco, CA
USA PH 510.499.0894
jon at rejon.org
http://www.rejon.org

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Inkscape (http://inkscape.org)
Open Clip Art Library (www.openclipart.org)
Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org)
San Francisco Art Institute (www.sfai.edu)