I want to connect some dots between terms-of-use and licenses. The terms-of-use, such as <http://openoffice.org/terms_of_use>, linked at the bottom of the OpenOffice.org pages do not provide a license to those pages. The terms of use provide disclaimers on behalf of the host and set conditions that apply to contributions that might be made by an user of the site. But the presence of the terms of use on the bottom of a page is independent of whether or not the page in question is partly or entirely such a contribution. I expect that the same would be true for any terms-of-use that Apache provides on the bottoms of web pages that are produced as part of Apache projects.
The fact that the check-out of the version-controlled form of (most of) those pages via SVN does not carry any notices does not mean they are not under someone's copyright. There is also no indication of them being under any license such as that described in [1: <http://www.openoffice.org/license.html>], however. Now, I don't think anyone (or at least, not a lot of anyones) will be disturbed to see us preserving the OpenOffice.org site and its operation, as well as incubating the site into a form that aligns with the incubation of the development process and production of more releases. Even if the site is not covered by the SGA, I doubt that there will be a problem so long as there is deliberate care and accountability for the origin of the material. My appeal on this thread is for our exercise of due care in making that transition, and respecting the concerns of the ASF for how that is done and any specific determinations that are made by the legal folks. I have other concerns in how a safe landing of OpenOffice.org is achieved, as I am sure others have as well. Nevertheless, this thread and my specific concrete concern here is solely about substitution of terms and addition of copyright and license notices on materials as served from web sites, particularly without any legal review. (The branding issue is an interesting separate matter. I hope there are ways to mitigate that for material that did not originate in the podling.) - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Rob Weir [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 11:01 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: PLEASE STOP " RE: svn commit: r795631 - in /websites/production/openofficeorg: On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm not sure. > > Absent specific details that say these pages are covered by the SGA, that is > another reason to stop. > Not really. This is mixing up copyright with license. Regardless of copyright, these files are clearly under an open source license [1], and that license gives us permission to copy, modify and post them. If included in the SGA we would have additional permissions, like the ability to modify but not share the source for modifications. But that is not a right that we need, nor is it one that the podling will ever exercise. Of course, if we want to include such materials in a release, then we need to investigate this further, for the benefit of downstream consumers. > And even then, the standard-form SGA is not a copyright transfer. It is only > a license. There has been information already that no copyright transferred. > > Affixing an Apache copyright notice appears to be inappropriate in any case. > But you could make that argument about almost any page at apache.org, right? What is the basis for having an Apache copyright statement on any page, unless it was written as a work-for-hire by Apache staff? This isn't a specific issue concerning these specific pages or this podling. By all means, satisfy your curiosity on the larger issue. I'd be interested in the answer as well. I suspect that either every Apache project as well as the ASF is in error on this point, or you and I are in error. I'm not taking bets on the outcome ;-) > Affixing notices and licenses/terms has legal implications and that does not > seem appropriate for CTR actions. > I think we're just injecting the site notice onto every page that is served up by the podling. My reading is that this is required by the site branding policy [2] I hope we're not sticking an Apache copyright statement into every HTML source file. That would be questionably on technical grounds as well. -Rob [1] http://www.openoffice.org/license.html [2] http://incubator.apache.org/guides/branding.html > - Dennis > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Rob Weir [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 09:27 > To: [email protected]; [email protected] > Subject: Re: PLEASE STOP " RE: svn commit: r795631 - in > /websites/production/openofficeorg: > > On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Dennis E. Hamilton > <[email protected]> wrote: >> I think it is inappropriate to make web visible duplicate and different >> pages that are presently available via the OpenOffice.org. There is much >> more to determine before the migration of the OpenOffice.org content and >> services is staged. There is no worked-out consensus on how that will >> progress through integration so that user-facing OpenOffice.org and project >> facing openoffice.apache.org are separated appropriately, if at all. >> >> More important to me is that fact that those pages don't "belong" to us. >> > > Are you sure? > > These are the static website pages per project: > http://openoffice.org/projects/native-lang > > In order to check these in, the person who created these files would > have needed to sign and return the OOo contributor agreement. So > Oracle has the ability to set a ALv2 on these. > > I know this is not true in all cases for all content on the OOo > website, especially wiki content. But don't you see how it is true in > this specific case? > > Or am I missing something? > > -Rob > >
