Scott Carr wrote:
If you can not prove where every piece of the document comes from, and
who worked on it, then you are basically giving up the document.
I don't think that's right. None of the open source licenses have a
requirement to track changes, and there are some very smart lawyers who
have worked on "open source" since before it was called open source, and
none of them have added this sort of requirement to any FOSS license.
If you
cannot prove where a specific piece of the document came from, you also
open up yourself to litigation by corporate entities.
Let's say for instance Microsoft decides a specific section of the User
Guide was stolen from them. We would have to figure out who worked on
said section, and be able to track where it came from.
No.
1) It is up to Microsoft to prove that you stole something, not up to
you to prove that you didn't.
2) You cannot "prove" where the document came from simply by putting a
list of changes on the front page. Anyone can write anything on the
front page. Having a list of changes there proves nothing in a court.
3) If you *did* prove that section xyz was inserted by Joe Smith, that
doesn't prove that it was or wasn't copied.
The argument you posed confuses identity with security. Knowing the name
of the submitter doesn't tell you anything about the legality of the
submission. In converse, if Microsoft can show sufficient similarity
between a section in the document and one that they own, copyright
infringement has been proven regardless of who committed it, and it has
to be removed.
Otherwise the whole document could be taken down, because the project
couldn't prove that one section.
This is not true. Microsoft would have to prove that it was copied, and
that the copy was not covered under fair use. If Microsoft did succeed
in doing that, you wouldn't have to take down the whole document. You'd
have to remove the offending section.
OpenOffice.org is being designed so that corporate and private interests
can be maintained. If we let everyone do anything they want, then
corporate interests would look at the project as a legal minefield.
This is a straw man. No one has suggested that we let anyone do anything
they want. Jean and Peter have discussed the merits of letting the user
choose a different license for his work.
Cheers,
Daniel.
--
/\/`) http://opendocumentfellowship.org
/\/_/
/\/_/ A life? Sounds great!
\/_/ Do you know where I could download one?
/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
