There is a discussion going on right now in the "free software business"
list relating to what everyone's been talking about here. What happened was
O'Reilly made this big announcement that the "opensourced" [sic] their _Open
Sources_ book when all they did was make the text available free of charge;
people called their bluff and now everyone's wondering about the
implications of free texts etc. -- and yeah the trouble with it right now is
the standards of attribution haven't really been laid out; can someone make
a business tracking attributions of free works?
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 12:16:49 +0900 (JST)
From: Stephen J. Turnbull <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Michael Stutz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Michael Tiemann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Rich Persaud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
John Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Lisa Mann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED],
Githogori <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OpenSources "opensourced"
>>>>> "Michael" == Michael Stutz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Michael> On Wed, 19 May 1999, Michael Tiemann wrote:
>> But I don't want people twisted what I said into things I did
>> not say, and then attributing them to me.
Michael> Who wants that? Copylefting the text does not give anyone
Michael> permission to modify it and then attribute those
Michael> modifications to you. But it does give anyone permission
Michael> to modify it.
Thank you! Amid rafts of vituperation, a beacon of clarity.
However, one must admit that the standards of attribution in most
copylefted source code leave a lot to be desired from the point of
view of authors of polemic (Benyamin Netanyahu was similarly trapped
to his dismay recently, although I assume the issue there was forgery,
not incomplete attribution).
This is a a pragmatic problem of implementation which we'll have to
address if we want pamphleteers and artists to use Copyleft; it
doesn't make `right-to-modify reserved' licenses open source, of course.
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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What are those two straight lines for? "Free software rules."
