In <URL:news:local.gnu.music.discuss> on Thu 15 Jul, Chris Sawer wrote:
[snip]
> 1. Public domain - people can basically do what they want with the
> music; there are no restrictions.
>
> Tagline: This music is part of the Mutopia project and has been placed
> in the public domain by the person who typeset it. Reproducing and
> distributing this music is encouraged - copy this music and share it!
>
> 2. GPL - people can do almost what they like with the music except for
> making it non-free ie. removing the copyright message and selling the
> music.
Selling printed copies of the music should be encouraged. Consider that not
that many people will have easy access to Lilypond to begin with, and may
not be able to use it to print free music themselves. Those that can use
LilyPond will be able to print music out, but not necessarily at a high
quality of printing and binding (though the typesetting will be spot
on :-) ).
Commercial printers will be able to bind the music nicely, something that
most people are never likely to be able to do by themselves. Mutopia would
help bring down the price of music printed this way, benefitting people who
have never heard of Mutopia and Lilypond. And commercial printers may
contribute to the development of Lilypond.
As for licences, the questions seem to be:
1. Whether we can copyleft out-of-copyright music.
2. Whether we should copyleft out-of-copyright music.
3. What licence should be used for copylefting music.
4. Whether Mutopia should allow a diversity of licences.
and
5. Are these questions actually important?
For 1: If you take a piece of music that is out-of-copyright in all but its
engraving and convert it to mudela, can it then be usefully copyrighted?
Copyright exists in an engraving of music separately from the music itself,
but I doubt whether this extends to copyright in a mudela representation.
Could someone take the mudela, convert it to some other format or engrave
it, and make it proprietary? Could they even claim copyright on Lilypond's
output? How do you tell that the music passed through the phase of being in
mudela from Mutopia?
But then, the GNU project has never bothered too much about whether its
copylefts are enforcable. (I doubt whether proprietary programs can be
stopped from dynamically linking with GPL'd libraries, for instance.)
Incidentally, would Mutopia be part of the GNU project, or related to the
FSF?
Is it worth copylefting public domain music? If it's not going to impede
the `information hoarders', it might just create a legal minefield to impede
legitimate users; legal wrangling wastes time. Copyleft is not always
necessary when a project reaches a certain size. eg. The BSD Unices remain
free, despite there having been dead-end proprietary forks. Once Mutopia
reaches a certain size, it will get well-known enough that people will know
that they can get the source to music, without copyleft licences requiring
commercial printers to tell them that they can. Unlike software, the source
to music is always available even if not electronically. Unlike the GNU
project, Mutopia isn't creating any new works.
As to the licence, the GNU GPL would not be an ideal choice. It's designed
for software, so some parts do not apply and might even be misleading when
applied to music. Since it predates the popularisation of the Internet, it
has requirements that binary (or printed music) suppliers also supply source
even if that source is already on the Internet; these requirements may not
be desirable any more. Besides, music does not need to be
licence-compatible with software.
The main reasons for using the GNU GPL would be laziness and familiarity.
The GPL has a reputation -- not always a good one, though. Some people know
where they stand with the GPL and see it as a guarantor of freedom -- but
others see it as too vague. It takes a lot of effort to create a new
licence, make sure that it works, and get people to accept it. Again, this
legal wrangling wastes time.
Project Gutenberg does not copyleft its e-texts, but it does impose some
conditions on how the project's name is to be used, and on what can be done
with e-texts when the project's name is included on them. Would Mutopia
want to take a similar approach? It can be done retrospectively, anyway.
Perhaps the discussion could be opened out onto a larger forum like
gnu.misc.discuss or a music newsgroup. It might generate a lot of heat, but
the issues would get covered quickly.
[snip]
> 3. Restricted - this would only be applicable to music that has been
> both written and arranged by the person submitting it to Mutopia, ie.
> it isn't actually out of copyright. People would only be allowed to
> distribute the music for free, and not charge money for it. Of course,
> if a composer wants to release their work under the GNU GPL or place it
> in the public domain then they are free to do so.
Perhaps Mutopia could do what Debian do: Debian's non-free and contrib
archives are maintained and indexed in much the same way as the free
archives, but they are not officially part of Debian.
--
Mark Seaborn
- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/mseaborn/ -
``There are no stupid questions, just stupid people'' -- Mr Garrison
