Karl & Rick, I'm proposing that we implement a open source catalog and credit system so that it is convenient for applications to display a graphical screen (or textual menu) listing all of a works component parts, information about them, copyright statements, license information, perhaps contributors, and most importantly project name, location and logo.
If (and only if) this system for acknowledgement is adopted broadly by the community would it be time to formalize the practice that is voluntarily followed, and making it a legal requirement for those who would otherwise wish to hide this attribution from their users. ... Let me start with some background to explain why I'd want this. First, the mostly irrelevant part. We have an excellent medical informatics project, RexDB (http://rexdb.org) which we are preparing to release under the AGPLv3 with the 7b attribution clause as currently deployed by SugarCRM and Zarafa. I want to stress that the ability to have a non-removable "Powered By" logo such as this was essential part of getting board approval. Since we won't have a "Professional" version, the ability to advertise our company as the authors of this work is quite important for our services and support business model. That said, what I'm proposing here isn't badgeware. So. It seems our *capstone* work, RexDB, will have some rather potent branding ability... but what about the works we've built upon? This seems kinda like a 1967 Volvo Wagon that happens to have a 427 Hemi, T56 gear box, and a special made titanium drive shaft under the hood. While we coo loudly about this sort of stuff to our more technical customers, we don't really have to. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Yet, it has never been a super high priority to formally have any sort of prominent attribution for those works that are absolutely essential to our work and our company's productivity. I'd like to fix that. In particular, I'd like to dogfood it, so that our forthcoming RexDB release has a prominent attribution, for all the stuff we're built upon: Python, PostgreSQL, FreeBSD, and dozens of others. Even if they don't otherwise require it. So, badgeware isn't the answer since it doesn't scale: here's no way that having two dozen badges at the bottom of every page will not work. One is ugly enough. What is the answer? So, interestingly enough, I think it is exactly what the other part of GPLv3 7b permits you to request: reasonable author attribution in the Appropriate Legal Notices ("ALN") for works containing the Software. The requirements of the ALN itself are quite strong; it has to be prominent and convenient feature, accessible from every interactive user interface of the system. So. I think the answer isn't to start with legal language, but rather to build the mechanism and then seek voluntary adoption. If that is achieved by the "inner circle" of our various open source communities, then we could talk about how to formalize it as both a standard "non-permissive" term to the GPLv3 and also as a new MIT+Attribution license (that is compatible with the GPLv3). I hope this helps. So, as such, I'm not asking for specific license feedback now or even approval. However, a broad discussion on this topic might be quite useful and of course I'd love to have others engaged with me so that it's a shared & broadly supported idea. That is... if it even makes sense. Best, Clark _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss