Comments within On 6/12/06, Steve Litt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Why can't the original author label his or her contribution as "Licensed under the GNU General Public License, Version 2", or similar. Layout files are code, so the GPL fits them well. Speaking for myself, I'd be hesitant to contribute anything without GPL'ling it, because some licenses leave open the door for a big bad company to change my layout just a little bit and take it proprietary, and who knows, some day sue me for using code derived from their code, and then I have to prove that mine preceded theirs.
**No, that is not a realistic worry. Your version would obviously predate theirs, so yours would be "prior art" in the language of intellectual property law. The resource may specify the license under which contributed layouts are to be governed by, the authors may specify (or simply fail to submit any if there is a license they don't care for!), or the site may have language that "those layouts contributed that do not otherwise specify a license are governed by the xyz license at this link." That would cover the bases, I think. There is a considerable debate, as you probably know, about whether the GPL is a good idea for areas such as these in which a layout may be used to create commercial documents. That is why I would suggest something like the BSD approach that permits commercial use. As a practical matter, I do not believe that these layout files would be a problem in any event. As I stated previously, there are only so many ways a given effect can be attained to result in a particular layout feature. Thus, this is not something that can easily be licensed as any sort of exclusive thing. I likened it to fonts, wherein the actual outline files cannot be copyrighted, but the names can be. Unlike original program code, a layout file is constrained by the existing application. Finally, it is unlikely that layout files themselves would be an issue--since the objective is the documents created with that layout file and not the layout file itself. I really think that this discussion is largely the result of worry over what is very unlikely to happen to begin with--but a reasonable application of a license is certainly not a bad idea at all. David
