Drew,
You get all of my votes plus any extras I can find lying around.
Frank,
I understand your position, but not your resignation to the status quo.
* My opinion: the OOo wiki is a public domain forum. I couldn't care
less about what Wikipedia does with their material. If people want to
publish to the OOo wiki, it should be with the unequivocal understanding
that to do so places their own work in the PD. If they need to click on
a "I agree" button to make it official, so be it. Further, if they are
copying, excerpting, or otherwise drawing on copyrighted material, it is
their responsibility to ensure that such posting complies with whatever
license, law, treaty, or regulation under which the material is
released. Why should it be the responsibility of a mostly volunteer
project to protect the ignorati from themselves?
* Anyone who feels their material is too sacred to place in the public
domain is free to publish anywhere else they would like.
* Matters like this are the primary reason I quit trying to contribute.
I refuse to place myself under the thumbs of people who appear to want
only to create another bureaucracy with its own set of arbitrary rules
in order to burden others, stifle productivity, and eradicate
creativity. If I cannot freely contribute my own work to be used
without concerns for JCA, CCL, or any other TLA, why bother? Sure, I am
free to follow my own advice and publish wherever else I please, but it
isn't worth the effort to me.
As for lawyers, I live in the middle of tens of thousands of square
miles of mostly empty, semi-arid land. I will gladly lead the
experiments designed to assess the agricultural value of lawyers,
judges, and politicians. In theory, their usefulness as fertilizer
should be great, but I'm concerned that it wouldn't be possible to
reduce the concentration to levels that wouldn't be toxic. Anybody want
to join me in applying for a study grant?
--
DougT
Frank Peters wrote:
Hi Andrew,
It's a nasty situation and it's particularly irksome that this
uncertainty hinders free development and doesn't help the user
a thing.
Frank
Hi,
I've been reading along silently and now I would like to make a comment.
What the heck is all the fuss about?
Look, why is this an issue at all - if you post to a public wiki it is
in the Public Domain - maybe I am being naive but here is how I feel:
maybe someone will come along and use something that I posted to the
wiki in their own work - great!
That was why I took the time to make postings there in the first
place, to give away some information that someone else might find
useful. The operative terms there being 'give away' and 'useful'.
Excellent. That's how you and I feel and it would be great if
everyone feeled that way. But you cannot be sure, so you need to
codify the situation to be on the safe side. Otherwise the project
may run into a situation where it gets lawsuited because of copyright
or license infringements. The legal situation is such that if there
is no license attached to content you need to ask the content owner/
copyright holder for explicit permission to use the content.
Just my perspective on this, after all the name is OO.o not OO.corp -
isn't it?
I wish it was so simple. And it would be if there were no
attorneys involved (and that's my favorite wishful thinking).
Actually, license and legal is an issue even with non-commercial
institutions. Wikipedia has copyright and license terms as well.
Frank
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