Re: [eigen] legal question

[Keir Mierle <mierle@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Benoit Jacob <jacob.benoit.1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

2010/7/24 Benoit Jacob <jacob.benoit.1@xxxxxxxxx>:

> 2010/7/23 Keir Mierle <mierle@xxxxxxxxx>:
>> +1 to CC-attribution
>> -1 to CC-share alike. That makes the license viral
>
> aaaaaaaaargh
>
> Everytime someone uses the word 'viral' to refer to copyleft, the
> aztec gods kill some kittens and Bill Gates has a burst of evil
> laughter.
>
>> like the GPL. Is in
>> really necessary?
>
> I just wanted to emulate the kind of weak copyleft as offered by the
> LGPL and MPL licenses.
>
> It could well be, indeed, that CC-BY-SA is actually closer to GPL: I
> just don't know!

This is indeed the case, unfortunately: CC-BY-SA is a stronger
copyleft than what we want.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/legalcode

Helmut's use case would actually be allowed since that would be a case
of "Collective Work", I guess, but slightly more intricate cases would
be unclear.

For example, I want to allow people to incorporate short excerpts from
our documentation, possibly in altered form, and have our copyleft
only cover the _part_ of their work that is a direct adaptation of
ours.

The 2 questions below remain. The lack of simple weak-copyleft
licenses, here too, is a real pity, and might indeed force us to
release our documentation without any copyleft if we really can't find
a suitable copyleft license.

What's wrong with CC-attribution? I see no reason for copyleft here.

Keir

 

Benoit

>
> So we have 2 questions to answer:
>  - do we indeed need some sort of weak-copyleft for the documentation
> or are we OK to release documentation under a slap-me-in-the-face
> license?
>  - if we do want some sort of weak-copyleft for documentation, what
> license would offer that? Is the SA in CC-BY-SA a too strong form of
> copyleft?
>
> Benoit
>
>> Keir
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 3:43 PM, Benoit Jacob <jacob.benoit.1@xxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> You do well to ask: indeed, we forgot to pick a free license for our
>>> documentation. We need to do that for a variety of reasons. Debian
>>> among others is distributing our documentation:
>>> http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/libeigen2-doc
>>>
>>> There are 2 mainstream licenses that would make sense for us:
>>>  - GNU FDL
>>>  - CC BY-SA
>>>
>>> This page is a good read on this topic:
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License
>>>
>>> My feeling is that we're a little better off with the slightly simpler
>>> CC license. It seems simpler because (AFAIK) it just doesn't have
>>> provisions of Cover Text / Invariant Sections. It's also nice that CC
>>> licenses like CC BY-SA make it clear in their very name what they are
>>> doing. No strong opinion though.
>>>
>>> Our wiki has defaulted to the FDL 1.2 but since there are few
>>> copyright holders, it should be easy enough to relicense. We must have
>>> compatible licenses for the wiki and docs, to allow moving content
>>> between them.
>>>
>>> OK for CC BY-SA ?
>>>
>>> Benoit
>>>
>>> 2010/7/22 Helmut Jarausch <jarausch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>>> > Hi,
>>> >
>>> > I'm selling my lecture notes in C++ to my students below cost.
>>> > I'd like to attach Eigen's QuickRefPage (including the URL) as an
>>> > appendix.
>>> >
>>> > Are there any legal problems about this?
>>> >
>>> > Helmut.
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > Helmut Jarausch
>>> > Lehrstuhl fuer Numerische Mathematik
>>> > RWTH - Aachen University
>>> > D 52056 Aachen, Germany
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>