Re: [libreoffice-documentation] Re: Licensing for NEW documents

[Jay Lozier <jslozier@gmail.com>]

On 11/26/2011 09:55 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
> Sorry, I forgot to sign this so it would line-wrap for folks whose email clients won't do it for them.
>
> Also, where I say below that an iCLA is required if a contribution to an Apache project is to be made, there are other ways.  A work could be contributed under an SGA (Software Grant Agreement, I think.)  The SGA provides a permissive license to Apache that allows the work to be licensed as an Apache project result.  It has to be done by someone entitled to do so. (That is what Oracle did in licensing OpenOffice.org to the ASF.  Oracle still holds the copyright though and other licenses of the same content are not revocable.  That's why the Oracle grant does not interfere with TDF continuing with LO as a derivative of the LGPLd OO.o software.  Although new work from AOO under ALv2 will be third-party to TDF, etc., etc.)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamilton@acm.org]
> Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2011 18:25
> To: documentation@global.libreoffice.org
> Subject: RE: [libreoffice-documentation] Re: Licensing for NEW documents
>
> I'm not quite clear what Alex is observing about rebranding of the New documents Jean is talking about.  Let's break it down into parts.
>
>   If someone who did not hold the copyright made a derivative work of those documents to rebrand them for Apache OpenOffice, change screen shots, etc., they would need to honor the original license.  (If it is dual licensed the creator of the derivative has a choice which license(s) to produce the derivative under.)
>
> If someone who held the copyright on the New documents were to make the derivative, they could certainly offer a different (dual) license.  By either route, even if one of the available licenses were an Apache ALv2 license, it still would not constitute a contribution to the Apache OpenOffice project.  Contribution is a separate act.
>
> Now, to have it also be contributed to an Apache project, there would have to be a contribution agreement (iCLA).  Whether that is done or not is a separate decision.
> An Apache project, or any other project for which the ALv2 license is compatible could also rely on the new document as a 3rd party work.  In the case of an Apache project, this would not happen if the licensor objected.
>
> A final example: If I wrote a new document that applied to LO and licensed it in a way that TDF accepts, I could also rebrand and modify it myself and offer a different license on that version.  I am in a position to go farther and contribute the rebranded one to the Apache OpenOffice project too.  That involves more steps, even though I have already registered an iCLA with ASF.
>
> [I'm not going to get into how ODF Authors and others might hold joint copyright and how that complicates new licensing and especially contribution to ASF.]
>
>   - Dennis
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Thurgood [mailto:alex.thurgood@gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2011 14:35
> To: documentation@global.libreoffice.org
> Subject: [libreoffice-documentation] Re: Licensing for NEW documents
>
> Le 26/11/2011 20:15, Dennis E. Hamilton a écrit :
>
>
> Hi Dennis,
>
>
> > There is absolutely no requirement to file an iCLA with the Apache Software Foundation in order to use the Apache License v2.0.  The iCLA is for contributors to Apache projects.  It says so right in the part quoted below.  Many projects not carried out as Apache projects use the license.  (Compare with using the GPL versus contributing to a Gnu project, the latter generally requiring a license to FSF.)
Sounds like it is best to stick with a Creative Commons license only for 
LO with the author(s) having the rights to reassign to others as they 
wish. The problem with reassignment, if I understand copyrights, is that 
all the holders must agree or it not valid.
> Thank you for specifying that. I admit that my mind was rather more
> focussing on the possibility that the "new" (and I share Jean's
> understanding of the same meaning of "new") LibreOffice documents, if
> they were rebranded as AOOo documentation under AL2 as part of the AOOo,
> would then constitute a contribution under that project and thus require
> iCLAs.
>
>
> Alex


--
Jay Lozier
jslozier@gmail.com


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