Re: [eigen] legal question

[Benoit Jacob <jacob.benoit.1@xxxxxxxxx>]

2010/7/24 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.

Indeed, I've been thinking about this, and CC-BY should be good enough
for us. The material in our documentation is mostly Eigen-specific,
so, the more it spreads, the better for Eigen.

Others, what are your opinions?

Benoit


> 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
>> >>> >
>> >>> >
>> >>> >
>> >>> >
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>
>