Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
> > Since the PHP manual is under the GPL all people around the world think,
> > they can copy it and publish it in printed form. This is also the thinking
> > mostly all PHP Group and Documentation members. But the publisher have
> > now the copyright and this can us protect from distributing the manual as
> > usual. Copyright law is not GPL.
> The publisher cannot possibly have the copyright.
They can. The GPL doesn't cover printed, non code, documentation. It merely
requires that the source for *programs* is freely included with any derivative
programs.
The copyright itself on the manual covers most of the base work, but it doesn't
protect it from intellectual property piracy and theft in the same way the
GPL protects the code from IP piracy and theft.
It's deep and murky in the realm of "original authorship" vs. "derivative
works", but basically, it works like this:
Even though the actual documentation, examples, descriptions, and prototypes
for the PHP code is owned by the documentation group... the copyrights for
"Core PHP Programming" (Atkinson, Prentice Hall) are owned by Atkinson
and Prentice Hall... in spite of that work having much which is derived
_from_ the actual documentation.
Since it's a derivative work, but _not_ under the GPL (GPL doesn't apply to
docs), Prentice Hall can claim authorship and copyright (rightfully so, in
that case...).
While it would be an interesting case of splitting hairs on what is, and isn't,
"original" vs. "derivative" work, suffice to say that with a few lines of
Perl, anybody can "take over" the copyrights by making a manual with some
minor content changes. They can then sue somebody else if they published
a manual, because the PHP group *doesn't* have the copyright on their printed
manual, or derivative works, and any manual published by the PHP group would
be far too similar to the one that is *already owned* by somebody else.
Lets take another example: I've authored text on many manual pages.
I own some copyright on those documents. Somebody downloads manual, and changes
my variable names, my program flow, my whitespace, and prints the pages.
Now _they_ own copyright on that derivative, printed document. I try to
sell a printed version of my writing. They can sue me, and win, because
I don't have a printed, "prior art", work that I can point to and say
"I wrote it first"!. Now, I could print out every page I work on, copyright
it, and _then_ I'd own it (and have prior art), but they are still within
their bounds to download the entire thing, print it out, make changes, and
own the derivative portions (without suing me).... but then, each author
is saddled with the burden of protecting their authorship.
> The authors of the
> documentation hold the copyright. I see nothing wrong with them printing
> up the documentation. If there were to try to stop others from doing the
> same, then we would have a problem.
Exactly the issue!
This is the problem to head off before it happens. "Retroactively protecting"
it *doesn't work*. If it became a problem, declaring that "it wasn't intended
to happen this way" isn't a legal argument. If we protect it from IP piracy
_now_, we stop others from ever having the ability to enforce a sole
copyright.
> But until I see evidence of that I don't see the issue.
I view this issue in terms of protecting the intellectual property from
future piracy. If we can do a few things to prevent it from being taken away,
ever, then we can stop all of these discussions and be done with the issue.
If we don't do something, the documentation is available for theft, and
we have no recourse if somebody starts trying to sue us. I suggest that
we can fix the whole problem by changing one line on the copyright
page:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/copyright.php
"This manual can be redistributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License as published by the Free Software Foundation".
This would require derivatives to print a URL to the original docs, if they are
printing more than 100 copies (not a burdensome request). It allows them to
make substantial changes. It preserves original authorship, as well
as protecting the rights of derivative authorship. It _is_ a "viral"
license in that sense, as you cannot take two derivations away from
the "source" and claim sole ownership.
-Ronabop
PS:
http://www.php.net/COPYRIGHT.txt
1998(?)
--2D426F70|759328624|00101101010000100110111101110000
Personal: [EMAIL PROTECTED], 520-326-6109, http://www.opus1.com/ron/
Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED], 520-546-8993, http://www.pnsinc.com/
The opinions expressed in this email are not necessarily those of myself,
my employers, or any of the other little voices in my head.
