Licensing for NEW documents

Hi :slight_smile:
Ouch!  Errr, could it be argued that we are just using their licence without actually being an ASF project and therefore the "contributor" to their project is the Team rather than individuals within the team?  As individuals you are not contributing to the ASF OOo.  It's the documentation team that is the contributor?

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi,

Given that we're talking about such a fundamental thing as a change of
license in new LibreOffice documentation, I still reckon it would be
natural to involve the BoD in discussing the idea...

http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Licensing-for-NEW-documents-tp3536793p3536793.html

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.)

The license itself suggests all that is needed to apply it to your own work. The ODF Authors are certainly free to do so without any permission or agreement with the ASF. See <http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt> and its Appendix.

It is also the case that, from the perspective of an Apache project that might have some keen interest in this material ( [;<), non-Apache sources of ALv2-licensed material are treated as 3rd party sources. It just happens that the licenses are highly compatible [;<). The CC-By-Attribution (but not Share-Alike) is also pretty compatible.

Also, independently licensing under ALv2 is *not* the same as contributing it to Apache. (I've registered an iCLA with ASF and I'm an Apache committer, but my independent projects that I'm licensing under ALv2 are not contributions to any Apache project.)

- Dennis

Given that I'm proposing a change to put new docs into the license preferred by LO, I don't see the point in taking up the Board's time. I think Tom covered this well in his note. But I see you have already contacted them...

--Jean

I should clarify a few points in my proposal.

By "new documents" I do not mean new editions of existing docs (eg the updates from 3.3 to 3.4). I mean docs that are "written from scratch".

Having a dual license given in the user guide template does not *require* new docs (that are not part of a user guide) to have both licenses applied. For example, the author of a NEW document (not part of a user guide) about LibreOffice could choose to delete the Apache license.

In fact, AFAIK there is no requirement for such docs to be based on the user guide template The template's main value is in providing a consistent look-and-feel (styles, colours, layout) and its use is therefore encouraged for all LO docs long enough to need pages for title, copyright, ToC. The template also provides a convenient boilerplate of text for the copyright page. But that page can be modified to fit the requirements of docs that are not part of the user guide set.

Of course that brings up the question of what is a user guide versus some other document. Are stand-alone docs also "user guides"? In one sense, yes, anything written to support or guide users could be considered a user guide; but I don't use that term to describe standalone docs written by individuals and contributed to the project. I say this just to make it clear what *I* am talking about, not to try to impose my terminology choice on the rest of you. :slight_smile:

--Jean

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.)

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

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

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.)

Hi Dennis,

Thank you for your comprehensive answer, it certainly clears up a few things for me, even though I'm sticking to my original position of not wishing to dual-license any new work I might produce within the framework of the LibreOffice documentation project.

Whatever happens, the initial authors of a work (barring employment contracts and specific national copyright law that might apply to them) are always free to re-release their work at a later date under the terms that they choose.

Thanks again Dennis for your insight into how the AL2 works, much appreciated.

Alex

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.)

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

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

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.

I disagree. Dennis has covered well in various notes the situation
with including the Apache license in a dual license arrangement. It is
IMO very much an advantage, not a problem, and avoids exactly the
situation you mention (of perhaps wanting to relicense in future). Of
course, it potentially means that some people (eg Alex) may choose not
to contribute to documents licensed in this way. But I suspect that
most contributors don't and won't care, and of those who do care, most
will be happy with the dual license. Indeed, I suspect that most
contributors to the docs produced by ODFAuthors and the docs being
created here at LO have never paid any attention to the licensing of
those docs.

I'll reiterate my comment in another note that if someone (you, for
example) were to write a new document from scratch and wanted to
license it only under CC-BY-SA, then they can certainly do so.

--Jean

Hi,

Given that we're talking about such a fundamental thing as a change of
license in new LibreOffice documentation, I still reckon it would be
natural to involve the BoD in discussing the idea...

indeed. :wink: Can you maybe post to board-discuss?

Florian

Hi :slight_smile:

I think Alex's objections have been cleared away by Dennis's clarifications
so i suspect that Alex might well be willing to contribute under
dual-licensing. As i understand it the objection was something to do with
individuals having to sign an agreement with Apache but Dennis said that
would not be required. I am a little hazy about that tho!

I think that if employees of a 3rd party company have been ordered to work
on LibreOffice then it's likely that the company has accepted that works
produced by them are not the property of the 3rd party company. The
company's i can think of that are likely to let (or order) employees to work
on LO are ones such as Novel, RedHat, Canonical, Google or perhaps
governments such as the Spanish ones all of whom are quite familiar with and
welcoming of the idea of employees doing work for other companies because it
gives them a better end-product when combined with their own stuff. I'm
never sure about what is going on in Brasil but again it seems to be
positive about this sort of thing. Companies that are really strict about
claiming their employees work as their own are unlikely to be contributing
workers time to this project in the first place. I gather there are some
companies that impose restrictions on what employees do with their free-time
especially if using company equipment. I think employees of such companies
are likely to already be aware of the likelihood of those sorts of
restrictions.

So, i think all objections to dual-licensing have been eliminated but i'm
still not completely certain of that. The pedantry and legalese in this
thread is difficult to understand but from what i can gather i think
dual-licensing of new documentation is possible without any individuals
signing CLA agreements?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
Dohhhh. Please ignore my lengthy previous email!
Apols and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Jean,

> 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.

I disagree. Dennis has covered well in various notes the situation
with including the Apache license in a dual license arrangement. It is
IMO very much an advantage, not a problem, and avoids exactly the
situation you mention (of perhaps wanting to relicense in future). Of
course, it potentially means that some people (eg Alex) may choose not
to contribute to documents licensed in this way. But I suspect that
most contributors don't and won't care, and of those who do care, most
will be happy with the dual license. Indeed, I suspect that most
contributors to the docs produced by ODFAuthors and the docs being
created here at LO have never paid any attention to the licensing of
those docs.

I'll reiterate my comment in another note that if someone (you, for
example) were to write a new document from scratch and wanted to
license it only under CC-BY-SA, then they can certainly do so.

I don't understand the whole discussion. If I read the explanation at
http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#cc-sa
correct there is no need for another licensing than CC-BY-SA, is it?
The CC licensing also very common in the environment of writing and publishing.

Regards,
Andreas

CC-SA wasn't discussed, just the consequences of using ALv2, and whether that had any connection with iCLA that are used in the case of Apache projects.

Note that the Apache determination concerning CC-SA acceptability only covers distribution without modification. That probably does not matter to this discussion. With regard to any CC-BY-SA license, it is valuable to have an explicit statement in the work itself how sufficient attribution is to be made. In an Apache release, that will be looked for and honored.

Reassignment is different than adding a license or providing the material under an additional/different license.

Reassignment is about copyright. Let's not go there.

Still, offering a license from a multiple-author work does raise issues about the arrangement among those authors and how such things as assignment and licensing are arrived at. That's whatever the arrangement is and what it allows. I have nothing to say about any matter of that sort.

- Dennis

Hi Dennis, Jean, *,

thus I see no need to change the licensing or double-license with ALv2. There is no
need to do the work outsite the current platform ODFAuthors.org. The contributors to
the OOo documentation are familar with that CMS and it's workflow.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi,

Reassignment is different than adding a license or providing the material
under an additional/different license.

Reassignment is about copyright. Let's not go there.

that would something that would not work in some countries, e.g. Germany. An author
could not give away his authorship. He could only give away the rights to use his
work.

Regards,
Andreas

We're actually talking about *LibreOffice* docs here, which are not
being done (in English) on the ODFAuthors website. Though I guess
there are implications for translations of LO docs that are being done
through ODFAuthors, so that is a good point to consider... one that I
had not previously thought about.

--Jean