OMG wiki license

[Jon Phillips]

On Sat, 2007-01-27 at 12:25 -0500, Richard Franks wrote:
> I think this is all a bit overkill. I don't see any license other than
> the description "this mailing list is for open discussion and
> feedback", for this mailing list.. yet these potentially copyrightable
> messages are mirrored by openmoko.com, gmane, etc.
> 
> Why isn't everyone being sued?

Right, there are many issues, but lets just focus on the wiki right
now ;)

> In our case, the source was either:
> a) An intentional email sent without copyright notice, to a
> membership-unknown public mailing list, with full knowledge that it
> would be stored and made freely available.
> b) An intentional edit made to a freely accessible public wiki.
> 
> I don't see a legal case being made out of this.

Right, but better to protect ourselves. Also, companies, like
FIC/OpenMoko have to take every precaution. So, if we want our content
included, we need to be cautious as well.

<snip />

> Why don't we take a snapshot of the current wiki, and reword the
> content into a new licensed wiki? It's less work than doing everything
> all over again, we lose no contributions, and it's an opportunity to
> reorganise a bit.
> 
> I'll volunteer to do a chunk of that work if we go that route.
> 
> Richard

Yes, this is an option. Who is related to opentogo? And/or, what is the
best way to go about this approach.

I also thought about going through and deleting a page, putting a GNU
FDL 1.2 statement at the top of the page, and then summarizing/redoing
the old content. This way, any future contributions are protected.

Cool? Yet again, I propose we do this at 11:59 PM PST SAT JAN 27 so we
can knock this out.

What do you think?

Jon



> 
> On 1/27/07, David Schlesinger <David.Schlesinger at palmsource.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 1/27/07 3:26 AM, "Jon Phillips" <jon at rejon.org> wrote:
> >
> > > On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 16:21 +0100, Harald Welte wrote:
> > >> On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 07:29:47AM -0500, Richard Franks wrote:
> > >>> then there is no copyright issue as the contributors have implicitly
> > >>> put their words into the public domain?
> > >
> > > This is not true and for sure in the US, where the instant someone
> > > contributes, their contribution is governed under copyright.
> >
> > Correct. You can't "implicitly" put anything into the public domain under US
> > copyright law: you'd have to make a specific and concrete declaration to do
> > so, or (more usually) simply wait for the copyright on it to expire...
> >
> > If you're interesting in folding all the Wiki content under the FDL, and you
> > want to avoid running afoul of potential copyright entanglements, you're
> > going to have to start over from scratch, I believe.
> >
> > You're also going to need to have each participant explicitly agree
> > (probably when their account is created) to get explicit agreement that they
> > abandon any interests they hold in any content they create on the site and
> > assign copyright to such content to "The OpenMoko Project" or whatever. You
> > might well also want a statement to the effect that any content they submit
> > must not be derivative of material held under copyright elsewhere and be
> > free of other encumbrances, etc., etc...
> >
> > This could get complicated, see...?
> >
> >
> >
> 
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-- 
Jon Phillips

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