Alain Culos wrote:
> I would really limit the number of licences down to the bare minimum
> sufficient to provide the miscellaneous requirements. If one does not,
> would two licences suffice?
I do agree that the proliferation of licenses is a nuisance. I'd hope
that either a BSD-style license or a copyleft license would be appropriate
for nearly all works.
The problem is if a work is already copylefted before it gets to us, using
(say) the CPDL. Should we accept this work? The copyright holder may not
wish to use our license. For a complicated arrangement, there could be
several copyright holders, they might be hard to track down.
> I'm trying to ease the job of the sheet music browser (me) so he/she
> knows what he/she is getting without having to read reams of licences
> for every single piece he/she downloads should he/she want to make
> commercial use of the music.
Well, if we require royalty-free performance, broadcast and recording,
then most users will have nothing to worry about; even, say, an amateur
orchestra selling a few CDs of their concert (sure, they won't have
copyright protection, but they probably don't have the money to enforce
copyright anyway). Professional publishers who want to make proprietory
editions would need to understand the licences, but I think that's ok.
For comparison, I would happily sell CDs of Debian GNU/Linux without
having read the license for all 3000 packages contained within. Their
free software guidelines tell me that I have the right to sell all the
packages. (Though not to restrict downstream redistribution)
If there is disagreement about how to proceed, we could always just use
one BSD-style license and one copyleft license for now, then see what
happens. It may be that the problem won't actually arise. Would people
be amenable to this?
David
--
A problem shared is a problem squared.
