-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Like I said before (see http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0104/msg01443.html), I intend to package Wayne Aiken's atheist fortunes available at his site (http://www4.ncsu.edu/~aiken/). This is the response I've got from him. I'm waiting for advice (is it enough to include this e-mail response as the copyright?). Since he states he "encourages everyone to copy it and use it freely", I'm pretty sure I'm authorized to package it, but IANAL, so I'm asking you guys (and girls, in case Demonishi is reading this).
Thanks. [nb. again, if you're subscribed to -legal and not to -devel, please Cc to me] - -----FW: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>----- Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 00:02:37 -0400 (EDT) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: (Carlos Laviola) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: copyright Hi Carlos-- Sorry its taken so long to get back to you, but you caught me right in the middle of convention/travel season. >I'm interested in packaging the atheist fortunes available at your web >site for the Debian GNU/Linux system. We have a policy that requires us >to include the copyright of all packages that compose our system. >Therefore, I'd like to ask you to inform me what is the copyright on >the citations. If you don't have one, I'd like to recommend the GNU >General Public License (GPL), available at >http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. I currently, and intentionally, have no copyright over the fortunes collection. I encourage everyone to copy it and use it freely, and as far as your system goes, you're most certainly welcome to it. As for the constituent quotes, my understanding is that they are either so old that they are public domain, or else the relatively brief quoting falls under the "fair use" doctrine. Plus, the fact that it has never been sold nor any money exchanged for it, means that I've never had any problems with it. Some people have suggested that it be compiled into a real book, as Chaz Bufe once did with many quotes. I'm not sure that I could do that with the collection as-is- I probably would need to get permission for many recent quotes, which is why I've decided to keep it in freely-distributed electronic form. I'm not sure if this would impact the way that you would package it in your system- thanks for the URL on the GNU license, and I'll take a look at it and see how it can be applied. If it needs a specific copyright statement to be included, I probably will adopt something like that, and I'll let you know as soon as I've officially applied whatever it needs to the file. Since its a Linux system, you might also want to talk with Ed Gauci <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> who has developed a whole suite of utilities for working with my particular fortune file, including a "quote of the day" generator, and several web-based utilities for extracting quotes. You might want to include those utilities with it, and Ed probably wouldn't mind packaging it all together. > >I'd also like to thank you for the great job - the fortunes you >collected are a funny, yet insightful overview of atheism. Thanks! It was originally intended as just a collection of neat quotes to use in .signature files, but its grown into a lot more than just that over the years. - ---- Wayne Aiken [EMAIL PROTECTED] "You can BE what PO Box 30904 http://www4.ncsu.edu/~aiken/ you WON'T!!" Raleigh, NC 27622 AIM: slackx42 --"Bob" (919) 954-5956 - --------------End of forwarded message------------------------- - -- carlos laviola - icq #55799523 $ chown us:us /your_base -R chown: what you say!! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE66fSWZAYCJzUW03IRAraYAJ971SBQC7trHP3+G4BnLS/+ldfwYQCcCjNC xVkDa28HNfzAB3qRhHjcMIA= =jsh0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----