Re: Terms of Service on Forums
A quick reminder. The support forums are still pointing to Oracle's Policies and Terms of Use document: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use This is inappropriate, inaccurate, confusing and quite possibly improper. It is also embarrassing for our project to have a Terms of Use page that starts: 1. INTRODUCTION. This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle). (Nothing against Oracle, of course, but it is embarrassing that this page is still here 8 months after I first reported it,) I've made several good faith attempts at proposing a replacement over the past year, but all were lost in bottomless bikeshedding. I'm not going to waste my time on this yet another time. Hopefully someone on the PMC feels empowered to take my past proposal and run with it, or create an alternative and resolve this issue. Regards, -Rob On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Rob Weir robw...@apache.org wrote: Can someone take ownership of this issue? https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118939 Look at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php Then to the footer and the Policies and Terms of Use. This links to this page: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use That starts with This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle) It is nearly all wrong. I consider a graduation issue that we get this remedied. Would it make sense to harmonize the terms with the wiki? Both allow user/non-committer contributions. -Rob
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
This page is blank and now redirects to /license.html If someone cares to change it go ahead. Regards, Dave On Oct 14, 2012, at 5:28 PM, Rob Weir wrote: A quick reminder. The support forums are still pointing to Oracle's Policies and Terms of Use document: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use This is inappropriate, inaccurate, confusing and quite possibly improper. It is also embarrassing for our project to have a Terms of Use page that starts: 1. INTRODUCTION. This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle). (Nothing against Oracle, of course, but it is embarrassing that this page is still here 8 months after I first reported it,) I've made several good faith attempts at proposing a replacement over the past year, but all were lost in bottomless bikeshedding. I'm not going to waste my time on this yet another time. Hopefully someone on the PMC feels empowered to take my past proposal and run with it, or create an alternative and resolve this issue. Regards, -Rob On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Rob Weir robw...@apache.org wrote: Can someone take ownership of this issue? https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118939 Look at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php Then to the footer and the Policies and Terms of Use. This links to this page: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use That starts with This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle) It is nearly all wrong. I consider a graduation issue that we get this remedied. Would it make sense to harmonize the terms with the wiki? Both allow user/non-committer contributions. -Rob
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 9:06 PM, Dave Fisher dave2w...@comcast.net wrote: This page is blank and now redirects to /license.html Thanks! -Rob If someone cares to change it go ahead. Regards, Dave On Oct 14, 2012, at 5:28 PM, Rob Weir wrote: A quick reminder. The support forums are still pointing to Oracle's Policies and Terms of Use document: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use This is inappropriate, inaccurate, confusing and quite possibly improper. It is also embarrassing for our project to have a Terms of Use page that starts: 1. INTRODUCTION. This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle). (Nothing against Oracle, of course, but it is embarrassing that this page is still here 8 months after I first reported it,) I've made several good faith attempts at proposing a replacement over the past year, but all were lost in bottomless bikeshedding. I'm not going to waste my time on this yet another time. Hopefully someone on the PMC feels empowered to take my past proposal and run with it, or create an alternative and resolve this issue. Regards, -Rob On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Rob Weir robw...@apache.org wrote: Can someone take ownership of this issue? https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118939 Look at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php Then to the footer and the Policies and Terms of Use. This links to this page: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use That starts with This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle) It is nearly all wrong. I consider a graduation issue that we get this remedied. Would it make sense to harmonize the terms with the wiki? Both allow user/non-committer contributions. -Rob
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 11:26 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: I am not the one to answer that question. It is a policy matter for the ASF and, I presume, a determination that also involves legal@ a.o. My point is that since other ASF and project sites do not have a ToU statement on them, then it is not necessary to have one to conform to ASF policies. I don't have a ToU on my web sites, though many of the pages have Creative Commons 2.0 notices. I require commenters to be registered to comment on my blogs, but I don't know there is a ToU that goes with any of those, although there might have been when Google Blogger was the publishing service. But my needs (and responsibilities) are quite different than the those of the ASF in fulfilling its public-interest operation and how it respects the work of others. Again, we don't see ToU on ASF sites. I think it matters that the great majority of content that is already there was already published under terms of use. There are legacy terms to deal with in now that material is dealt with and in how visitors can regard it without knowing when such material was contributed. Actually, the specific example Kay brought up was our incubator site at http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg. None of that had legacy terms. It is all new stuff. So why do we need ToU there? I think it matters that there are requests for permission to reuse materials on the site and it is not clear what standing the PPMC has to approve (or decline) such requests. We *never* have standing to approve requests to reuse content. We (the project) do not own content. In most cases neither does the ASF. The most we can do is point users to an existing license. -Rob - Dennis PS: http://apache.org has a copyright notice, a license notice (and link), and trademark notice. There is no notice of any kind in the head element of the HTML. The situation with the openoffice.org domains and their content is not so simple. -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 18:55 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: Um, yes, it definitely is the ASF that should be standing behind the ToU. They're the only legal entity. Of CollabNet ToU, I know not. The terms.mdtext that Kay found are very much the ToU of the original openoffice.org site, with someone's tweaking. So Oracle used them. I think removing legalese is fine, until it become bad legalese. What more would you remove? A thought experiment: what if we removed 100%? In other words, had no ToU on the website. Would anything bad happen? What would the risk be? I don't see a ToU on www.apache.org, or in a spot check of several high profile Apache projects. Do we have some special risk that they do not have that requires us to put additional legalese on every website page? Are they helping their users less than we are ours? How? - Dennis PS: I notice there needs to be some improvement in what the terms apply to. The found one did not mention forums. I think it should be about the openoffice.org domain and its subdomains. incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg is a different game. If we do decide to go with ToU, one option would be to have a set of common terms and then a list of additional terms which apply to only particular services. But personally, I'd toss it all out except necessary notices for things like privacy and trademark. We're not a multi-billion dollar corporation and we don't need to armor our website with legal terms like we are one. -Rob -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 17:44 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: @Kay Well, just to prove to myself that I can make use of the ASF CMS Bookmarklet, I edited the terms.html page. [I didn't trigger publication though, so you may have to find them in the staging place.] Here are the essential changes I made: I eliminated AOO-PPMC as the authority, since it isn't. I used the Apache Software Foundation as the HOST. If we think the ASF is the authority, then they should determine the ToU, right? In any case, this looks like the old CollabNet ToU, doesn't it? It looks like Dave checked in last August. It will fit our needs as much as a stranger's shoes would fit me. In any case, my original suggestion still applies: Let's stop trying to hack the legalese of existing ToU written by and for other organizations, since none of are lawyers and we do not understand fully how the parts fit together. Instead, let's state, in plain English, what we want to cover in the ToU
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 4:49 AM, Rob Weir robw...@apache.org wrote: On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 11:26 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: I am not the one to answer that question. It is a policy matter for the ASF and, I presume, a determination that also involves legal@ a.o. My point is that since other ASF and project sites do not have a ToU statement on them, then it is not necessary to have one to conform to ASF policies. I don't have a ToU on my web sites, though many of the pages have Creative Commons 2.0 notices. I require commenters to be registered to comment on my blogs, but I don't know there is a ToU that goes with any of those, although there might have been when Google Blogger was the publishing service. But my needs (and responsibilities) are quite different than the those of the ASF in fulfilling its public-interest operation and how it respects the work of others. Again, we don't see ToU on ASF sites. I think it matters that the great majority of content that is already there was already published under terms of use. There are legacy terms to deal with in now that material is dealt with and in how visitors can regard it without knowing when such material was contributed. Actually, the specific example Kay brought up was our incubator site at http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg. None of that had legacy terms. It is all new stuff. So why do we need ToU there? The existing ToU at http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/terms.html was created by Dave Fisher and last modified by Rob before I made a few changes yesterday. I haven't looked at Dennis's changes yet but I think from what he's said here they make sense. The ToU on the project site is basically a re-working by Dave ( I presume since he was the creator of this page based on what I assume was a request by all at the time) of what is now on http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use In fact, much of what is in the project Terms of Use page is pretty much what Dennis had suggested in his revisions attache to the older issue he filed. Why I like having a ToU -- * it simplifies what the legalities are with respect to the web site. I think the wording could be changed to extend to ALL of the services we currently provide now -- web site(s), forums, wiki * it puts in ONE place what the legal aspects are of using/modifying what we provide Usage and donation terms are much simpler -- probably more in line with what most people would expect. * there is NO mention of ALv2 for content in: http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/terms.html which makes good sense to me * the ToU needs some modification with respect to the source code area where, yes, Alv2, would definitely apply I think there does need to be clarification between the host being ASF vs AOO-PPMC. I take host to be a hosting entity which I would think would be ASF. If we don't create a ToU like this to cover the web site(s), the forums and wiki(s), I do think, based on questions we've already gotten, we need to state something about content use and modification. I think it matters that there are requests for permission to reuse materials on the site and it is not clear what standing the PPMC has to approve (or decline) such requests. We *never* have standing to approve requests to reuse content. We (the project) do not own content. In most cases neither does the ASF. The most we can do is point users to an existing license. OK, but what IS that license? That is the question/problem. We don't seem to be able to find this or agree on it. -Rob - Dennis PS: http://apache.org has a copyright notice, a license notice (and link), and trademark notice. There is no notice of any kind in the head element of the HTML. The situation with the openoffice.org domains and their content is not so simple. -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 18:55 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: Um, yes, it definitely is the ASF that should be standing behind the ToU. They're the only legal entity. Of CollabNet ToU, I know not. The terms.mdtext that Kay found are very much the ToU of the original openoffice.org site, with someone's tweaking. So Oracle used them. I think removing legalese is fine, until it become bad legalese. What more would you remove? A thought experiment: what if we removed 100%? In other words, had no ToU on the website. Would anything bad happen? What would the risk be? I don't see a ToU on www.apache.org, or in a spot check of several high profile Apache projects. Do we have some special risk that they do not have that requires us to put additional legalese on every website page? Are they helping their users less than we are ours? How
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
page -- in over a year. So this isn't a burning concern for our users. And in one of those cases it took us over a week to figure out what the license was. I still think that we should just post an ASF copyright notice, and link to privacy and trademark policies. -Rob -Rob - Dennis PS: http://apache.org has a copyright notice, a license notice (and link), and trademark notice. There is no notice of any kind in the head element of the HTML. The situation with the openoffice.org domains and their content is not so simple. -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 18:55 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: Um, yes, it definitely is the ASF that should be standing behind the ToU. They're the only legal entity. Of CollabNet ToU, I know not. The terms.mdtext that Kay found are very much the ToU of the original openoffice.org site, with someone's tweaking. So Oracle used them. I think removing legalese is fine, until it become bad legalese. What more would you remove? A thought experiment: what if we removed 100%? In other words, had no ToU on the website. Would anything bad happen? What would the risk be? I don't see a ToU on www.apache.org, or in a spot check of several high profile Apache projects. Do we have some special risk that they do not have that requires us to put additional legalese on every website page? Are they helping their users less than we are ours? How? - Dennis PS: I notice there needs to be some improvement in what the terms apply to. The found one did not mention forums. I think it should be about the openoffice.org domain and its subdomains. incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg is a different game. If we do decide to go with ToU, one option would be to have a set of common terms and then a list of additional terms which apply to only particular services. But personally, I'd toss it all out except necessary notices for things like privacy and trademark. We're not a multi-billion dollar corporation and we don't need to armor our website with legal terms like we are one. -Rob -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 17:44 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: @Kay Well, just to prove to myself that I can make use of the ASF CMS Bookmarklet, I edited the terms.html page. [I didn't trigger publication though, so you may have to find them in the staging place.] Here are the essential changes I made: I eliminated AOO-PPMC as the authority, since it isn't. I used the Apache Software Foundation as the HOST. If we think the ASF is the authority, then they should determine the ToU, right? In any case, this looks like the old CollabNet ToU, doesn't it? It looks like Dave checked in last August. It will fit our needs as much as a stranger's shoes would fit me. In any case, my original suggestion still applies: Let's stop trying to hack the legalese of existing ToU written by and for other organizations, since none of are lawyers and we do not understand fully how the parts fit together. Instead, let's state, in plain English, what we want to cover in the ToU and then go to legal-discuss for the wordsmithing. -Rob [ ... ] -- MzK I would rather have a donkey that takes me there than a horse that will not fare. -- Portuguese proverb
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
. We do have explicit consent for all the modifications and additions in our svn. Going beyond that to any outgoing license will get you into a dozen different rules and exceptions. And to what end? We've had two requests for info on reusing content -- just a single page -- in over a year. So this isn't a burning concern for our users. And in one of those cases it took us over a week to figure out what the license was. We could write that the source in svn is either explicitly licensed in the code including AL2, or it is implied. (Then we'll need to explain how to examine the source using the CMS.) I do think that explaining how to use svn and the cms to examine the license is not TOU material. It is a FAQ or other page. I still think that we should just post an ASF copyright notice, and link to privacy and trademark policies. Agreed. Regards, Dave -Rob -Rob - Dennis PS: http://apache.org has a copyright notice, a license notice (and link), and trademark notice. There is no notice of any kind in the head element of the HTML. The situation with the openoffice.org domains and their content is not so simple. -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 18:55 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: Um, yes, it definitely is the ASF that should be standing behind the ToU. They're the only legal entity. Of CollabNet ToU, I know not. The terms.mdtext that Kay found are very much the ToU of the original openoffice.org site, with someone's tweaking. So Oracle used them. I think removing legalese is fine, until it become bad legalese. What more would you remove? A thought experiment: what if we removed 100%? In other words, had no ToU on the website. Would anything bad happen? What would the risk be? I don't see a ToU on www.apache.org, or in a spot check of several high profile Apache projects. Do we have some special risk that they do not have that requires us to put additional legalese on every website page? Are they helping their users less than we are ours? How? - Dennis PS: I notice there needs to be some improvement in what the terms apply to. The found one did not mention forums. I think it should be about the openoffice.org domain and its subdomains. incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg is a different game. If we do decide to go with ToU, one option would be to have a set of common terms and then a list of additional terms which apply to only particular services. But personally, I'd toss it all out except necessary notices for things like privacy and trademark. We're not a multi-billion dollar corporation and we don't need to armor our website with legal terms like we are one. -Rob -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 17:44 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: @Kay Well, just to prove to myself that I can make use of the ASF CMS Bookmarklet, I edited the terms.html page. [I didn't trigger publication though, so you may have to find them in the staging place.] Here are the essential changes I made: I eliminated AOO-PPMC as the authority, since it isn't. I used the Apache Software Foundation as the HOST. If we think the ASF is the authority, then they should determine the ToU, right? In any case, this looks like the old CollabNet ToU, doesn't it? It looks like Dave checked in last August. It will fit our needs as much as a stranger's shoes would fit me. In any case, my original suggestion still applies: Let's stop trying to hack the legalese of existing ToU written by and for other organizations, since none of are lawyers and we do not understand fully how the parts fit together. Instead, let's state, in plain English, what we want to cover in the ToU and then go to legal-discuss for the wordsmithing. -Rob [ ... ] -- MzK I would rather have a donkey that takes me there than a horse that will not fare. -- Portuguese proverb
RE: Terms of Service on Forums
I have no idea why a page on the incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg structure has terms that apply to the openoffice.org domain (and subdomains?). I also have no idea why that page has an HTML head comment that offers itself under ALv2, in conflict with the terms it states. I have nothing further to add to this conversation. - Dennis -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 04:50 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 11:26 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: I am not the one to answer that question. It is a policy matter for the ASF and, I presume, a determination that also involves legal@ a.o. My point is that since other ASF and project sites do not have a ToU statement on them, then it is not necessary to have one to conform to ASF policies. I don't have a ToU on my web sites, though many of the pages have Creative Commons 2.0 notices. I require commenters to be registered to comment on my blogs, but I don't know there is a ToU that goes with any of those, although there might have been when Google Blogger was the publishing service. But my needs (and responsibilities) are quite different than the those of the ASF in fulfilling its public-interest operation and how it respects the work of others. Again, we don't see ToU on ASF sites. I think it matters that the great majority of content that is already there was already published under terms of use. There are legacy terms to deal with in now that material is dealt with and in how visitors can regard it without knowing when such material was contributed. Actually, the specific example Kay brought up was our incubator site at http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg. None of that had legacy terms. It is all new stuff. So why do we need ToU there? I think it matters that there are requests for permission to reuse materials on the site and it is not clear what standing the PPMC has to approve (or decline) such requests. We *never* have standing to approve requests to reuse content. We (the project) do not own content. In most cases neither does the ASF. The most we can do is point users to an existing license. -Rob - Dennis PS: http://apache.org has a copyright notice, a license notice (and link), and trademark notice. There is no notice of any kind in the head element of the HTML. The situation with the openoffice.org domains and their content is not so simple. -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 18:55 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: Um, yes, it definitely is the ASF that should be standing behind the ToU. They're the only legal entity. Of CollabNet ToU, I know not. The terms.mdtext that Kay found are very much the ToU of the original openoffice.org site, with someone's tweaking. So Oracle used them. I think removing legalese is fine, until it become bad legalese. What more would you remove? A thought experiment: what if we removed 100%? In other words, had no ToU on the website. Would anything bad happen? What would the risk be? I don't see a ToU on www.apache.org, or in a spot check of several high profile Apache projects. Do we have some special risk that they do not have that requires us to put additional legalese on every website page? Are they helping their users less than we are ours? How? - Dennis PS: I notice there needs to be some improvement in what the terms apply to. The found one did not mention forums. I think it should be about the openoffice.org domain and its subdomains. incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg is a different game. If we do decide to go with ToU, one option would be to have a set of common terms and then a list of additional terms which apply to only particular services. But personally, I'd toss it all out except necessary notices for things like privacy and trademark. We're not a multi-billion dollar corporation and we don't need to armor our website with legal terms like we are one. -Rob -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 17:44 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: @Kay Well, just to prove to myself that I can make use of the ASF CMS Bookmarklet, I edited the terms.html page. [I didn't trigger publication though, so you may have to find them in the staging place.] Here are the essential changes I made: I eliminated AOO-PPMC as the authority, since it isn't. I used the Apache Software Foundation as the HOST. If we think the ASF is the authority, then they should
RE: Terms of Service on Forums
I suggest that one not be so careless about asserting ASF copyright on third party materials. Why does this meme persist? Please consult Legal before doing anything so outrageous. - Dennis -Original Message- From: Dave Fisher [mailto:dave2w...@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 11:01 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Jul 16, 2012, at 10:45 AM, Rob Weir wrote: [ ... ] I still think that we should just post an ASF copyright notice, and link to privacy and trademark policies. Agreed. Regards, Dave [ ... ]
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Jul 16, 2012, at 11:57 AM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: I have no idea why a page on the incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg structure has terms that apply to the openoffice.org domain (and subdomains?). I also have no idea why that page has an HTML head comment that offers itself under ALv2, in conflict with the terms it states. I have nothing further to add to this conversation. Because it was a work in progress from an initial effort that you nixed for the reasons above. I stopped when you asserted the above. Sorry, I never deleted it. Regards, Dave - Dennis -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 04:50 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 11:26 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: I am not the one to answer that question. It is a policy matter for the ASF and, I presume, a determination that also involves legal@ a.o. My point is that since other ASF and project sites do not have a ToU statement on them, then it is not necessary to have one to conform to ASF policies. I don't have a ToU on my web sites, though many of the pages have Creative Commons 2.0 notices. I require commenters to be registered to comment on my blogs, but I don't know there is a ToU that goes with any of those, although there might have been when Google Blogger was the publishing service. But my needs (and responsibilities) are quite different than the those of the ASF in fulfilling its public-interest operation and how it respects the work of others. Again, we don't see ToU on ASF sites. I think it matters that the great majority of content that is already there was already published under terms of use. There are legacy terms to deal with in now that material is dealt with and in how visitors can regard it without knowing when such material was contributed. Actually, the specific example Kay brought up was our incubator site at http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg. None of that had legacy terms. It is all new stuff. So why do we need ToU there? I think it matters that there are requests for permission to reuse materials on the site and it is not clear what standing the PPMC has to approve (or decline) such requests. We *never* have standing to approve requests to reuse content. We (the project) do not own content. In most cases neither does the ASF. The most we can do is point users to an existing license. -Rob - Dennis PS: http://apache.org has a copyright notice, a license notice (and link), and trademark notice. There is no notice of any kind in the head element of the HTML. The situation with the openoffice.org domains and their content is not so simple. -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 18:55 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: Um, yes, it definitely is the ASF that should be standing behind the ToU. They're the only legal entity. Of CollabNet ToU, I know not. The terms.mdtext that Kay found are very much the ToU of the original openoffice.org site, with someone's tweaking. So Oracle used them. I think removing legalese is fine, until it become bad legalese. What more would you remove? A thought experiment: what if we removed 100%? In other words, had no ToU on the website. Would anything bad happen? What would the risk be? I don't see a ToU on www.apache.org, or in a spot check of several high profile Apache projects. Do we have some special risk that they do not have that requires us to put additional legalese on every website page? Are they helping their users less than we are ours? How? - Dennis PS: I notice there needs to be some improvement in what the terms apply to. The found one did not mention forums. I think it should be about the openoffice.org domain and its subdomains. incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg is a different game. If we do decide to go with ToU, one option would be to have a set of common terms and then a list of additional terms which apply to only particular services. But personally, I'd toss it all out except necessary notices for things like privacy and trademark. We're not a multi-billion dollar corporation and we don't need to armor our website with legal terms like we are one. -Rob -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 17:44 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: @Kay Well, just to prove to myself that I can make use of the ASF CMS Bookmarklet, I edited the terms.html page. [I didn't
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
Dennis, On Jul 16, 2012, at 11:57 AM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: I suggest that one not be so careless about asserting ASF copyright on third party materials. Why does this meme persist? Please consult Legal before doing anything so outrageous. You cc'd legal-discuss while cutting out much of this whole email completely destroying all context. (Please cc: ooo-dev since not all of us are going to subscribe to the list to participate in this discussion.) Context: IANAL, but I believe that the whole webpage with the project's own banner, footer and navigation can be copyright The ASF whether or not all content in between those elements may have another copyright or none. Often we don't know the copyright because Sun and Oracle did not keep these records together - there is a list of copyright holders but no way of knowing if their material is still in the site or not. We believe that we have implied consent to use all the material from Oracle that is on www.openoffice.org and related domains. Dennis thinks it is outrageous to have an ASF copyright on these combined web pages, what does legal-discuss think? If this should be or already is a LEGAL JIRA issue then I am fine discussing it there. Regards, Dave - Dennis -Original Message- From: Dave Fisher [mailto:dave2w...@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 11:01 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Jul 16, 2012, at 10:45 AM, Rob Weir wrote: [ ... ] I still think that we should just post an ASF copyright notice, and link to privacy and trademark policies. Agreed. Regards, Dave [ ... ]
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 12:41 PM, Dave Fisher dave2w...@comcast.net wrote: Dennis, On Jul 16, 2012, at 11:57 AM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: I suggest that one not be so careless about asserting ASF copyright on third party materials. Why does this meme persist? Please consult Legal before doing anything so outrageous. You cc'd legal-discuss while cutting out much of this whole email completely destroying all context. (Please cc: ooo-dev since not all of us are going to subscribe to the list to participate in this discussion.) Context: IANAL, but I believe that the whole webpage with the project's own banner, footer and navigation can be copyright The ASF whether or not all content in between those elements may have another copyright or none. Often we don't know the copyright because Sun and Oracle did not keep these records together - there is a list of copyright holders but no way of knowing if their material is still in the site or not. We believe that we have implied consent to use all the material from Oracle that is on www.openoffice.org and related domains. Dennis thinks it is outrageous to have an ASF copyright on these combined web pages, what does legal-discuss think? If this should be or already is a LEGAL JIRA issue then I am fine discussing it there. Regards, Dave Dave -- This was discussed with legal in the past -- please see https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-104 - Dennis -Original Message- From: Dave Fisher [mailto:dave2w...@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 11:01 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Jul 16, 2012, at 10:45 AM, Rob Weir wrote: [ ... ] I still think that we should just post an ASF copyright notice, and link to privacy and trademark policies. Agreed. Regards, Dave [ ... ] -- MzK I would rather have a donkey that takes me there than a horse that will not fare. -- Portuguese proverb
RE: Terms of Service on Forums
Dave, I cc-d legal about the placing of an ASF Copyright on pages, something Rob suggested and you seconded. I was not intending to invite anything about the terms of service, etc. Sorry about that, - Dennis PS: There is a LEGAL JIRA issue about ToU for AOOi but it has gone nowhere AFAIK. -Original Message- From: Dave Fisher [mailto:dave2w...@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 12:41 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Cc: legal-disc...@apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums [ ... ] You cc'd legal-discuss while cutting out much of this whole email completely destroying all context. (Please cc: ooo-dev since not all of us are going to subscribe to the list to participate in this discussion.) Context: IANAL, but I believe that the whole webpage with the project's own banner, footer and navigation can be copyright The ASF whether or not all content in between those elements may have another copyright or none. Often we don't know the copyright because Sun and Oracle did not keep these records together - there is a list of copyright holders but no way of knowing if their material is still in the site or not. We believe that we have implied consent to use all the material from Oracle that is on www.openoffice.org and related domains. Dennis thinks it is outrageous to have an ASF copyright on these combined web pages, what does legal-discuss think? If this should be or already is a LEGAL JIRA issue then I am fine discussing it there. Regards, Dave - Dennis -Original Message- From: Dave Fisher [mailto:dave2w...@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 11:01 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Jul 16, 2012, at 10:45 AM, Rob Weir wrote: [ ... ] I still think that we should just post an ASF copyright notice, and link to privacy and trademark policies. Agreed. Regards, Dave [ ... ] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: legal-discuss-unsubscr...@apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: legal-discuss-h...@apache.org
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Jul 16, 2012, at 3:00 PM, Kay Schenk wrote: On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 12:41 PM, Dave Fisher dave2w...@comcast.net wrote: Dennis, On Jul 16, 2012, at 11:57 AM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: I suggest that one not be so careless about asserting ASF copyright on third party materials. Why does this meme persist? Please consult Legal before doing anything so outrageous. You cc'd legal-discuss while cutting out much of this whole email completely destroying all context. (Please cc: ooo-dev since not all of us are going to subscribe to the list to participate in this discussion.) Context: IANAL, but I believe that the whole webpage with the project's own banner, footer and navigation can be copyright The ASF whether or not all content in between those elements may have another copyright or none. Often we don't know the copyright because Sun and Oracle did not keep these records together - there is a list of copyright holders but no way of knowing if their material is still in the site or not. We believe that we have implied consent to use all the material from Oracle that is on www.openoffice.org and related domains. Dennis thinks it is outrageous to have an ASF copyright on these combined web pages, what does legal-discuss think? If this should be or already is a LEGAL JIRA issue then I am fine discussing it there. Regards, Dave Dave -- This was discussed with legal in the past -- please see https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-104 Well, h - not really conclusive - and not closed. I think that there are areas in www.openoffice.org that we certainly can assert copyright now - eg. download, main page, api, ... We will have to see if anything happens more on legal-discuss. I rather object to Dennis's cross posting this thread between legal-discuss and ooo-dev. It is an example of spreading the flow. Look more carefully at what Lawrence Rosen wrote on the JIRA issue. Egads, Dave - Dennis -Original Message- From: Dave Fisher [mailto:dave2w...@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 11:01 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Jul 16, 2012, at 10:45 AM, Rob Weir wrote: [ ... ] I still think that we should just post an ASF copyright notice, and link to privacy and trademark policies. Agreed. Regards, Dave [ ... ] -- MzK I would rather have a donkey that takes me there than a horse that will not fare. -- Portuguese proverb
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Jul 16, 2012, at 3:16 PM, Rob Weir wrote: On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 2:57 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: I suggest that one not be so careless about asserting ASF copyright on third party materials. Why does this meme persist? Why is there a copyright notice on the ASF home page? I assume that is a copyright on the arrangement and selection of pages, as well as the look and feel as set by the CSS, etc. The ASF, via the collaboration of its members, create a website that is not merely the sum of the individual pages, but is a creative work in itself, similar to a copyright that can exist on an anthology of poetry independent of the copyright for the individual poems. Please consult Legal before doing anything so outrageous. I don't see the outrage here with there being a copyright on the ASF homepage. Remember, *all* material on Apache websites is 3rd party, unless done as a work for hire by an Apache employee. The iCLA does not assign copyright to Apache. So we're not asserting a copyright on 3rd party material. Agreed. Note that we do the same thing in every Apache release, when we put an ASF copyright statement in the NOTICE file. Is that also an outrage against 3rd party contributions? Maybe the key is to find a way to make it clear that the copyright is on the site as a whole, but that individual pages remain under the copyright of their individual authors? I haven't read the entire discussion thread. Is that really necessary? Just double checking -- this material is apache licensed? --kevan
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
Top-Post meta-comment - Dennis answered on legal-discuss - if you wish to follow: http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-legal-discuss/201207.mbox/browser Regards, Dave On Jul 16, 2012, at 3:30 PM, Kevan Miller wrote: On Jul 16, 2012, at 3:16 PM, Rob Weir wrote: On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 2:57 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: I suggest that one not be so careless about asserting ASF copyright on third party materials. Why does this meme persist? Why is there a copyright notice on the ASF home page? I assume that is a copyright on the arrangement and selection of pages, as well as the look and feel as set by the CSS, etc. The ASF, via the collaboration of its members, create a website that is not merely the sum of the individual pages, but is a creative work in itself, similar to a copyright that can exist on an anthology of poetry independent of the copyright for the individual poems. Please consult Legal before doing anything so outrageous. I don't see the outrage here with there being a copyright on the ASF homepage. Remember, *all* material on Apache websites is 3rd party, unless done as a work for hire by an Apache employee. The iCLA does not assign copyright to Apache. So we're not asserting a copyright on 3rd party material. Agreed. Note that we do the same thing in every Apache release, when we put an ASF copyright statement in the NOTICE file. Is that also an outrage against 3rd party contributions? Maybe the key is to find a way to make it clear that the copyright is on the site as a whole, but that individual pages remain under the copyright of their individual authors? I haven't read the entire discussion thread. Is that really necessary? Just double checking -- this material is apache licensed? --kevan
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Kay Schenk kay.sch...@gmail.com wrote: On 07/07/2012 09:42 AM, drew wrote: On Sat, 2012-07-07 at 12:27 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 11:31 AM, drew d...@baseanswers.com wrote: On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:01 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 1:25 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton snip orcmid This might need to be separated for what the agreement is when people register/subscribe and provide information solicited to accomplish that. This seems like too broad an umbrella for what happens when folks register versus what happens when accessing sites versus what happens when sending an e-mail somewhere. /orcmid It would be good to link to the ToU from any registration. But note that we don't always have that access where it is a shared Apache service, for example CWiki. Nothing in the ToU speaks about emails, so that is red herring. A red herring? I don't think so - why should it only be valid if already there. The site references our mailing lists and certainly did, likely still does, IMO a comment on the public nature of mailing lists is really appropriate here. The point is this: a user can contribute to the mailing list without ever having visited the website. So posting ToU for the mailing list on a website is not going to really have any legal or even advisory effect.One thing that we could do is put ToU in the confirmation note we send to new list subscribers. Or even a link to a consolidated ToU on the website if that is how we do it. In any case, most of the ToU is in the nature of a notice: we are telling the user what will are doing, what we can do, and what we will do under certainly conditions. The main exception, where we are demanding something of the user, is if where we require a licence on their contributions. So that is the one thing where we cannot be casual. If we want to have an incoming licence on contributions that really needs to be baked into registration systems, list acknowledgement emails, etc. Well, I agree that this is a notice - I still feel it would appropriate to mention mailing list. What I've done just now is simply to move your text verbatim to the wiki - I'll add a paragraph for what I think is an apt way to address this. Give a read to that, and if you or anyone else thinks it's just our of place, well, that's why it's a white board, right ;-) //drew -Rob I just did a very quick draft mock-up of a new TOU at: https://cwiki.apache.org/**confluence/display/OOOUSERS/*** DRAFT*+Terms+of+Usehttps://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/*DRAFT*+Terms+of+Use based on Dennis's original corrections at: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/**show_bug.cgi?id=118518https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118518 IT still seems rather lengthy to me but... and it needs some additional information (ref URLs) and in what state is ASF incorporated or registered? I agree with Drew that perhaps we should mention the mailing lists in some way... I will work on this more tomorrow sometime and perhaps we can actually fix this. oh boy...well duh on me...when trying to track down where people should go when they think their own copyright has been infringed upon, I came across this... http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/terms.html already on the incubator web side. Is there any reason we just can't replace the current Terms on Use on openoffice.org with a link to this? It looks pretty good to me. Again, no reference to mailing lists -- I'm assuming we only want to highlight them with respect to validity of information? I don't see any other reason to throw them in really. Anyway, having found this other link, I will delete my mockup on the wiki. No use confusing things further. -- --**--** MzK There's no crying in baseball! -- Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks), A League of Their Own -- MzK I would rather have a donkey that takes me there than a horse that will not fare. -- Portuguese proverb
RE: Terms of Service on Forums
@Kay Well, just to prove to myself that I can make use of the ASF CMS Bookmarklet, I edited the terms.html page. [I didn't trigger publication though, so you may have to find them in the staging place.] Here are the essential changes I made: I eliminated AOO-PPMC as the authority, since it isn't. I used the Apache Software Foundation as the HOST. I removed all mention to projects, private or not. There are none of those any longer in terms of something someone can submit to under a different license. That simplifies a lot. I played lawyer-without-a-license and removed all statements about You [hereby] agree ... and You acknowledge and made the terms simply declarative statements of fact that the user is asserted to be obligated to. Since there is no action to have users read these terms and signify their agreement, I assume that language is as vacant as notices in e-mail signatures on posts to mailing lists that impose privacy and confidentiality obligations on anonymous recipients. I did not tweak the notice in the MarkDown that ends up hidden in the page headers and bluntly contradicts the terms themselves. I don't believe that the notice has any value, being generally not visible to viewers of the page, despite the fact that the HTML is the source code (but not in the sense of the form in which the document is maintained!). Also, the invisible header material declares that the terms.html page (and I suppose others) is available under the Apache License Version 2.0. I think that ends my ASF CMS JFDI experimentation. - Dennis PS: It was very awkward and I had a number of problems using the CMS via the bookmarklet and the edit page I then had to use. I went to my Working Copy of http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/ooo/site/trunk/content/openofficeorg/terms.mdtext and found that it was much easier to edit it on my local machine. Anyone know where JIRA issues on ASF CMS go? -Original Message- From: Kay Schenk [mailto:kay.sch...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 15:01 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Kay Schenk kay.sch...@gmail.com wrote: [ ... ] I just did a very quick draft mock-up of a new TOU at: https://cwiki.apache.org/**confluence/display/OOOUSERS/*** DRAFT*+Terms+of+Usehttps://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/*DRAFT*+Terms+of+Use based on Dennis's original corrections at: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/**show_bug.cgi?id=118518https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118518 IT still seems rather lengthy to me but... and it needs some additional information (ref URLs) and in what state is ASF incorporated or registered? I agree with Drew that perhaps we should mention the mailing lists in some way... I will work on this more tomorrow sometime and perhaps we can actually fix this. oh boy...well duh on me...when trying to track down where people should go when they think their own copyright has been infringed upon, I came across this... http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/terms.html already on the incubator web side. Is there any reason we just can't replace the current Terms on Use on openoffice.org with a link to this? It looks pretty good to me. Again, no reference to mailing lists -- I'm assuming we only want to highlight them with respect to validity of information? I don't see any other reason to throw them in really. Anyway, having found this other link, I will delete my mockup on the wiki. No use confusing things further. [ ... ]
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Jul 15, 2012, at 5:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: @Kay Well, just to prove to myself that I can make use of the ASF CMS Bookmarklet, I edited the terms.html page. [I didn't trigger publication though, so you may have to find them in the staging place.] Here are the essential changes I made: I eliminated AOO-PPMC as the authority, since it isn't. I used the Apache Software Foundation as the HOST. I removed all mention to projects, private or not. There are none of those any longer in terms of something someone can submit to under a different license. That simplifies a lot. I played lawyer-without-a-license and removed all statements about You [hereby] agree ... and You acknowledge and made the terms simply declarative statements of fact that the user is asserted to be obligated to. Since there is no action to have users read these terms and signify their agreement, I assume that language is as vacant as notices in e-mail signatures on posts to mailing lists that impose privacy and confidentiality obligations on anonymous recipients. I did not tweak the notice in the MarkDown that ends up hidden in the page headers and bluntly contradicts the terms themselves. I don't believe that the notice has any value, being generally not visible to viewers of the page, despite the fact that the HTML is the source code (but not in the sense of the form in which the document is maintained!). Also, the invisible header material declares that the terms.html page (and I suppose others) is available under the Apache License Version 2.0. I think that ends my ASF CMS JFDI experimentation. - Dennis PS: It was very awkward and I had a number of problems using the CMS via the bookmarklet and the edit page I then had to use. I went to my Working Copy of http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/ooo/site/trunk/content/openofficeorg/terms.mdtext and found that it was much easier to edit it on my local machine. Truthfully I use emacs on my svn copy most of the time. I have found the bookmarklet to have been remarkably improved over the last year. The buildbot parts are more visible, etc. Anyone know where JIRA issues on ASF CMS go? They go to INFRA. There is a CMS category. Regards, Dave -Original Message- From: Kay Schenk [mailto:kay.sch...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 15:01 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Kay Schenk kay.sch...@gmail.com wrote: [ ... ] I just did a very quick draft mock-up of a new TOU at: https://cwiki.apache.org/**confluence/display/OOOUSERS/*** DRAFT*+Terms+of+Usehttps://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/*DRAFT*+Terms+of+Use based on Dennis's original corrections at: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/**show_bug.cgi?id=118518https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118518 IT still seems rather lengthy to me but... and it needs some additional information (ref URLs) and in what state is ASF incorporated or registered? I agree with Drew that perhaps we should mention the mailing lists in some way... I will work on this more tomorrow sometime and perhaps we can actually fix this. oh boy...well duh on me...when trying to track down where people should go when they think their own copyright has been infringed upon, I came across this... http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/terms.html already on the incubator web side. Is there any reason we just can't replace the current Terms on Use on openoffice.org with a link to this? It looks pretty good to me. Again, no reference to mailing lists -- I'm assuming we only want to highlight them with respect to validity of information? I don't see any other reason to throw them in really. Anyway, having found this other link, I will delete my mockup on the wiki. No use confusing things further. [ ... ]
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: @Kay Well, just to prove to myself that I can make use of the ASF CMS Bookmarklet, I edited the terms.html page. [I didn't trigger publication though, so you may have to find them in the staging place.] Here are the essential changes I made: I eliminated AOO-PPMC as the authority, since it isn't. I used the Apache Software Foundation as the HOST. If we think the ASF is the authority, then they should determine the ToU, right? In any case, this looks like the old CollabNet ToU, doesn't it? It looks like Dave checked in last August. It will fit our needs as much as a stranger's shoes would fit me. In any case, my original suggestion still applies: Let's stop trying to hack the legalese of existing ToU written by and for other organizations, since none of are lawyers and we do not understand fully how the parts fit together. Instead, let's state, in plain English, what we want to cover in the ToU and then go to legal-discuss for the wordsmithing. -Rob I removed all mention to projects, private or not. There are none of those any longer in terms of something someone can submit to under a different license. That simplifies a lot. I played lawyer-without-a-license and removed all statements about You [hereby] agree ... and You acknowledge and made the terms simply declarative statements of fact that the user is asserted to be obligated to. Since there is no action to have users read these terms and signify their agreement, I assume that language is as vacant as notices in e-mail signatures on posts to mailing lists that impose privacy and confidentiality obligations on anonymous recipients. I did not tweak the notice in the MarkDown that ends up hidden in the page headers and bluntly contradicts the terms themselves. I don't believe that the notice has any value, being generally not visible to viewers of the page, despite the fact that the HTML is the source code (but not in the sense of the form in which the document is maintained!). Also, the invisible header material declares that the terms.html page (and I suppose others) is available under the Apache License Version 2.0. I think that ends my ASF CMS JFDI experimentation. - Dennis PS: It was very awkward and I had a number of problems using the CMS via the bookmarklet and the edit page I then had to use. I went to my Working Copy of http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/ooo/site/trunk/content/openofficeorg/terms.mdtext and found that it was much easier to edit it on my local machine. Anyone know where JIRA issues on ASF CMS go? -Original Message- From: Kay Schenk [mailto:kay.sch...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 15:01 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Kay Schenk kay.sch...@gmail.com wrote: [ ... ] I just did a very quick draft mock-up of a new TOU at: https://cwiki.apache.org/**confluence/display/OOOUSERS/*** DRAFT*+Terms+of+Usehttps://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/*DRAFT*+Terms+of+Use based on Dennis's original corrections at: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/**show_bug.cgi?id=118518https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118518 IT still seems rather lengthy to me but... and it needs some additional information (ref URLs) and in what state is ASF incorporated or registered? I agree with Drew that perhaps we should mention the mailing lists in some way... I will work on this more tomorrow sometime and perhaps we can actually fix this. oh boy...well duh on me...when trying to track down where people should go when they think their own copyright has been infringed upon, I came across this... http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/terms.html already on the incubator web side. Is there any reason we just can't replace the current Terms on Use on openoffice.org with a link to this? It looks pretty good to me. Again, no reference to mailing lists -- I'm assuming we only want to highlight them with respect to validity of information? I don't see any other reason to throw them in really. Anyway, having found this other link, I will delete my mockup on the wiki. No use confusing things further. [ ... ]
RE: Terms of Service on Forums
Um, yes, it definitely is the ASF that should be standing behind the ToU. They're the only legal entity. Of CollabNet ToU, I know not. The terms.mdtext that Kay found are very much the ToU of the original openoffice.org site, with someone's tweaking. So Oracle used them. I think removing legalese is fine, until it become bad legalese. What more would you remove? - Dennis PS: I notice there needs to be some improvement in what the terms apply to. The found one did not mention forums. I think it should be about the openoffice.org domain and its subdomains. incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg is a different game. -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 17:44 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: @Kay Well, just to prove to myself that I can make use of the ASF CMS Bookmarklet, I edited the terms.html page. [I didn't trigger publication though, so you may have to find them in the staging place.] Here are the essential changes I made: I eliminated AOO-PPMC as the authority, since it isn't. I used the Apache Software Foundation as the HOST. If we think the ASF is the authority, then they should determine the ToU, right? In any case, this looks like the old CollabNet ToU, doesn't it? It looks like Dave checked in last August. It will fit our needs as much as a stranger's shoes would fit me. In any case, my original suggestion still applies: Let's stop trying to hack the legalese of existing ToU written by and for other organizations, since none of are lawyers and we do not understand fully how the parts fit together. Instead, let's state, in plain English, what we want to cover in the ToU and then go to legal-discuss for the wordsmithing. -Rob [ ... ]
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: Um, yes, it definitely is the ASF that should be standing behind the ToU. They're the only legal entity. Of CollabNet ToU, I know not. The terms.mdtext that Kay found are very much the ToU of the original openoffice.org site, with someone's tweaking. So Oracle used them. I think removing legalese is fine, until it become bad legalese. What more would you remove? A thought experiment: what if we removed 100%? In other words, had no ToU on the website. Would anything bad happen? What would the risk be? I don't see a ToU on www.apache.org, or in a spot check of several high profile Apache projects. Do we have some special risk that they do not have that requires us to put additional legalese on every website page? Are they helping their users less than we are ours? How? - Dennis PS: I notice there needs to be some improvement in what the terms apply to. The found one did not mention forums. I think it should be about the openoffice.org domain and its subdomains. incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg is a different game. If we do decide to go with ToU, one option would be to have a set of common terms and then a list of additional terms which apply to only particular services. But personally, I'd toss it all out except necessary notices for things like privacy and trademark. We're not a multi-billion dollar corporation and we don't need to armor our website with legal terms like we are one. -Rob -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 17:44 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: @Kay Well, just to prove to myself that I can make use of the ASF CMS Bookmarklet, I edited the terms.html page. [I didn't trigger publication though, so you may have to find them in the staging place.] Here are the essential changes I made: I eliminated AOO-PPMC as the authority, since it isn't. I used the Apache Software Foundation as the HOST. If we think the ASF is the authority, then they should determine the ToU, right? In any case, this looks like the old CollabNet ToU, doesn't it? It looks like Dave checked in last August. It will fit our needs as much as a stranger's shoes would fit me. In any case, my original suggestion still applies: Let's stop trying to hack the legalese of existing ToU written by and for other organizations, since none of are lawyers and we do not understand fully how the parts fit together. Instead, let's state, in plain English, what we want to cover in the ToU and then go to legal-discuss for the wordsmithing. -Rob [ ... ]
RE: Terms of Service on Forums
I am not the one to answer that question. It is a policy matter for the ASF and, I presume, a determination that also involves legal@ a.o. I don't have a ToU on my web sites, though many of the pages have Creative Commons 2.0 notices. I require commenters to be registered to comment on my blogs, but I don't know there is a ToU that goes with any of those, although there might have been when Google Blogger was the publishing service. But my needs (and responsibilities) are quite different than the those of the ASF in fulfilling its public-interest operation and how it respects the work of others. I think it matters that the great majority of content that is already there was already published under terms of use. There are legacy terms to deal with in now that material is dealt with and in how visitors can regard it without knowing when such material was contributed. I think it matters that there are requests for permission to reuse materials on the site and it is not clear what standing the PPMC has to approve (or decline) such requests. - Dennis PS: http://apache.org has a copyright notice, a license notice (and link), and trademark notice. There is no notice of any kind in the head element of the HTML. The situation with the openoffice.org domains and their content is not so simple. -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 18:55 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: Um, yes, it definitely is the ASF that should be standing behind the ToU. They're the only legal entity. Of CollabNet ToU, I know not. The terms.mdtext that Kay found are very much the ToU of the original openoffice.org site, with someone's tweaking. So Oracle used them. I think removing legalese is fine, until it become bad legalese. What more would you remove? A thought experiment: what if we removed 100%? In other words, had no ToU on the website. Would anything bad happen? What would the risk be? I don't see a ToU on www.apache.org, or in a spot check of several high profile Apache projects. Do we have some special risk that they do not have that requires us to put additional legalese on every website page? Are they helping their users less than we are ours? How? - Dennis PS: I notice there needs to be some improvement in what the terms apply to. The found one did not mention forums. I think it should be about the openoffice.org domain and its subdomains. incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg is a different game. If we do decide to go with ToU, one option would be to have a set of common terms and then a list of additional terms which apply to only particular services. But personally, I'd toss it all out except necessary notices for things like privacy and trademark. We're not a multi-billion dollar corporation and we don't need to armor our website with legal terms like we are one. -Rob -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 17:44 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: @Kay Well, just to prove to myself that I can make use of the ASF CMS Bookmarklet, I edited the terms.html page. [I didn't trigger publication though, so you may have to find them in the staging place.] Here are the essential changes I made: I eliminated AOO-PPMC as the authority, since it isn't. I used the Apache Software Foundation as the HOST. If we think the ASF is the authority, then they should determine the ToU, right? In any case, this looks like the old CollabNet ToU, doesn't it? It looks like Dave checked in last August. It will fit our needs as much as a stranger's shoes would fit me. In any case, my original suggestion still applies: Let's stop trying to hack the legalese of existing ToU written by and for other organizations, since none of are lawyers and we do not understand fully how the parts fit together. Instead, let's state, in plain English, what we want to cover in the ToU and then go to legal-discuss for the wordsmithing. -Rob [ ... ]
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On 07/07/2012 09:42 AM, drew wrote: On Sat, 2012-07-07 at 12:27 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 11:31 AM, drew d...@baseanswers.com wrote: On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:01 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 1:25 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton snip orcmid This might need to be separated for what the agreement is when people register/subscribe and provide information solicited to accomplish that. This seems like too broad an umbrella for what happens when folks register versus what happens when accessing sites versus what happens when sending an e-mail somewhere. /orcmid It would be good to link to the ToU from any registration. But note that we don't always have that access where it is a shared Apache service, for example CWiki. Nothing in the ToU speaks about emails, so that is red herring. A red herring? I don't think so - why should it only be valid if already there. The site references our mailing lists and certainly did, likely still does, IMO a comment on the public nature of mailing lists is really appropriate here. The point is this: a user can contribute to the mailing list without ever having visited the website. So posting ToU for the mailing list on a website is not going to really have any legal or even advisory effect.One thing that we could do is put ToU in the confirmation note we send to new list subscribers. Or even a link to a consolidated ToU on the website if that is how we do it. In any case, most of the ToU is in the nature of a notice: we are telling the user what will are doing, what we can do, and what we will do under certainly conditions. The main exception, where we are demanding something of the user, is if where we require a licence on their contributions. So that is the one thing where we cannot be casual. If we want to have an incoming licence on contributions that really needs to be baked into registration systems, list acknowledgement emails, etc. Well, I agree that this is a notice - I still feel it would appropriate to mention mailing list. What I've done just now is simply to move your text verbatim to the wiki - I'll add a paragraph for what I think is an apt way to address this. Give a read to that, and if you or anyone else thinks it's just our of place, well, that's why it's a white board, right ;-) //drew -Rob I just did a very quick draft mock-up of a new TOU at: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/*DRAFT*+Terms+of+Use based on Dennis's original corrections at: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118518 IT still seems rather lengthy to me but... and it needs some additional information (ref URLs) and in what state is ASF incorporated or registered? I agree with Drew that perhaps we should mention the mailing lists in some way... I will work on this more tomorrow sometime and perhaps we can actually fix this. -- MzK There's no crying in baseball! -- Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks), A League of Their Own
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Fri, 2012-07-06 at 20:56 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 7:28 PM, drew d...@baseanswers.com wrote: Hello everyone, Clean slate - alright! How about we just start with something everyone agrees on. Point of order. I've made a proposal, in this thread, just two days ago. it is a clean slate, based on nothing before it. I've received only two substantive comments, from Wolf and Dennis. Everyone else seems to be running around, trying to understand why the ToU have not been updated yet. If you have some comments on my proposal I'd love to hear them. Ditto, if Dave or anyone else does. Howdy Rob, Ah ha - long story, short - I read your email from Tuesday and not the one from Wed so..it seems we all agree that updating the text at http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use is the better way to go. and I'll pick it up in a reply to that (well Dennis' comments).. BTW - as for use of the wiki for shared editing, a TOU page on the wiki was already setup for that, been there a good while and yes I also agree it would of been better if you had updated that and pointed to it in your email message. Best wishes, //drew
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 9:54 AM, drew d...@baseanswers.com wrote: On Fri, 2012-07-06 at 20:56 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 7:28 PM, drew d...@baseanswers.com wrote: Hello everyone, Clean slate - alright! How about we just start with something everyone agrees on. Point of order. I've made a proposal, in this thread, just two days ago. it is a clean slate, based on nothing before it. I've received only two substantive comments, from Wolf and Dennis. Everyone else seems to be running around, trying to understand why the ToU have not been updated yet. If you have some comments on my proposal I'd love to hear them. Ditto, if Dave or anyone else does. Howdy Rob, Ah ha - long story, short - I read your email from Tuesday and not the one from Wed so..it seems we all agree that updating the text at http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use is the better way to go. Actually, I have zero opinion on what the exact URL is. That is the least substantial of all decisions that need to be made. IMHO, we really need to start discussing the *contents* of the ToU. And in general, I'd recommend that we not spend time on things where there is already agreement. That does not move us forward. As far as I can tell, the two remaining areas of disagreement are: 1) What is the incoming license we require of contributions to user-editable services, like forums, wikis (CWiki and MWiki) and Bugzilla? 2) What can we say about the outgoing license on content on these services? Obviously this needs to harmonize with our answer to the above question, as well as with past incoming licenses on legacy contributions. For #1 I was arguing for a minimal license that merely allows us to host the content on our servers, but does not offer 3rd parties any reuse. Remember, we're talking about users posting bugs, asking questions on forums, etc. Requiring any greater license on these sites would be a huge inhibition for corporate employees to submit bug reports, ask questions on forums, etc. Or would be for any corporate employees who bothered to read the ToU's, since any greater terms would typically require management approval. So I don't think we should require opensource-style licenses from users merely interacting with the project at the support level. But maybe they cross a threshold when they start contributing to wikis. -Rob and I'll pick it up in a reply to that (well Dennis' comments).. BTW - as for use of the wiki for shared editing, a TOU page on the wiki was already setup for that, been there a good while and yes I also agree it would of been better if you had updated that and pointed to it in your email message. Best wishes, //drew
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:01 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 1:25 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: Let's step back a little. The markup that I created was designed to morph the Oracle terms of service to one that was similar but modified to use of ASF as the HOST and eliminate those considerations that do not apply (e.g., the use of distinct projects on the web site) under ASF custodianship. This approach was so folks could compare with what was already in place and produce a harmonious replacement. I'm not a lawyer and not prepared to say what is too much or too little. I agree that plain language statements are preferable. My favorite document of this kind is, after all, the Creative Commons Attribution Deed 2.0. However, there are some essential considerations, it seems to me: 1. Privacy should probably be separated as is commonplace on sites of this kind. Privacy should extend beyond what is done to support performance of the site and what the monitoring is, to embrace more clearly what is done with anything that is considered personally-identifiable information. In particular, the reliance on email addresses being made visible as a policy is something that users need to be aware of and why, and the need to be able to contact people by the e-mail address provided is also a matter of concern. What I have here is the minimum we need, mainly to satisfy Google, via their Terms of Service on the use of Google Analytics. If you want to add more, feel free. Howdy Dennis, Rob, etc I agree that it is common to see it as a separate page, but can't say that I know of a why, beyond convention. Using a a single TOU for _everything_ from the main site to the blog it would seem easier to move it into the common text, but the one thing I don't want to see is a privacy policy listed in two places ;) I don't have a big preference as to pp in the tou or a link to it. The text in the privacy section in Rob's proposal looks like a straight copy from http://www.openoffice.org/privacy.html with an addition of the paragraph to handle the wiki(s)/forums registration and would need then to update http://www.openoffice.org/license.html also. (I did not check if the stand alone privacy page is linked from anywhere else) If there is any kind of promise to be careful with personal data, that needs to be made in a way that the ASF can demonstrate diligence about and the ASF needs to be aware of the obligation the promise represents. My draft did not make any promise, so I don't see an issue. Privacy statements should be dated and back versions should be accessible. Yes, the ToU in general should be dated, etc. OK 2. The Terms of Use should be clear about what the HOST (the ASF) is granting generally to users of the site and what contributors to the site are granting to the HOST and all Users, absent any clearly-established special cases (licenses, contribution agreements, etc.). The outgoing license is a clear condition of a TOU and not having one for readers of general web pages seems erroneious. The actions that the HOST will take without notice and at its own discretion need to be clear also. Obviously I disagree. IMHO, An explicit outgoing license is not at all necessary in the ToU. Any public website has an implicit license that users can read it. That's all we require as a general statement. For most websites in the world, that is all they have. Beyond that, in a website like ours, with eclectic content under various licenses, in some cases undetermined licenses, we cannot make any simple, general and true statement about the outgoing license. It might be possible to make some extraordinarily complex statement about the outgoing license the website, but I don't see the value of that. In the end we're publishing software, not a website. It should not necessarily for someone to copy the website and create derivative works any more than it is necessary to copy posts from the mailing list to do the same. In this case, I think that the terms of use definitely need to be dated and back issues available. IMO handle this by placing the license for a page on the page, and would not expand the text in the TOU proposal. So I suppose what that means is I would favor a standard footer for the different websites covered, using the current main sites footer as the template, over time. Sure. orcmid comments=more in-line below/ - Dennis -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2012 06:50 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: [ ... ] I created an issue that proposed a new terms of use that was consistent with the Oracle
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 11:31 AM, drew d...@baseanswers.com wrote: On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:01 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 1:25 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: Let's step back a little. The markup that I created was designed to morph the Oracle terms of service to one that was similar but modified to use of ASF as the HOST and eliminate those considerations that do not apply (e.g., the use of distinct projects on the web site) under ASF custodianship. This approach was so folks could compare with what was already in place and produce a harmonious replacement. I'm not a lawyer and not prepared to say what is too much or too little. I agree that plain language statements are preferable. My favorite document of this kind is, after all, the Creative Commons Attribution Deed 2.0. However, there are some essential considerations, it seems to me: 1. Privacy should probably be separated as is commonplace on sites of this kind. Privacy should extend beyond what is done to support performance of the site and what the monitoring is, to embrace more clearly what is done with anything that is considered personally-identifiable information. In particular, the reliance on email addresses being made visible as a policy is something that users need to be aware of and why, and the need to be able to contact people by the e-mail address provided is also a matter of concern. What I have here is the minimum we need, mainly to satisfy Google, via their Terms of Service on the use of Google Analytics. If you want to add more, feel free. Howdy Dennis, Rob, etc I agree that it is common to see it as a separate page, but can't say that I know of a why, beyond convention. Using a a single TOU for _everything_ from the main site to the blog it would seem easier to move it into the common text, but the one thing I don't want to see is a privacy policy listed in two places ;) I don't have a big preference as to pp in the tou or a link to it. The text in the privacy section in Rob's proposal looks like a straight copy from http://www.openoffice.org/privacy.html with an addition of the paragraph to handle the wiki(s)/forums registration and would need then to update http://www.openoffice.org/license.html also. (I did not check if the stand alone privacy page is linked from anywhere else) If there is any kind of promise to be careful with personal data, that needs to be made in a way that the ASF can demonstrate diligence about and the ASF needs to be aware of the obligation the promise represents. My draft did not make any promise, so I don't see an issue. Privacy statements should be dated and back versions should be accessible. Yes, the ToU in general should be dated, etc. OK 2. The Terms of Use should be clear about what the HOST (the ASF) is granting generally to users of the site and what contributors to the site are granting to the HOST and all Users, absent any clearly-established special cases (licenses, contribution agreements, etc.). The outgoing license is a clear condition of a TOU and not having one for readers of general web pages seems erroneious. The actions that the HOST will take without notice and at its own discretion need to be clear also. Obviously I disagree. IMHO, An explicit outgoing license is not at all necessary in the ToU. Any public website has an implicit license that users can read it. That's all we require as a general statement. For most websites in the world, that is all they have. Beyond that, in a website like ours, with eclectic content under various licenses, in some cases undetermined licenses, we cannot make any simple, general and true statement about the outgoing license. It might be possible to make some extraordinarily complex statement about the outgoing license the website, but I don't see the value of that. In the end we're publishing software, not a website. It should not necessarily for someone to copy the website and create derivative works any more than it is necessary to copy posts from the mailing list to do the same. In this case, I think that the terms of use definitely need to be dated and back issues available. IMO handle this by placing the license for a page on the page, and would not expand the text in the TOU proposal. So I suppose what that means is I would favor a standard footer for the different websites covered, using the current main sites footer as the template, over time. Sure. orcmid comments=more in-line below/ - Dennis -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2012 06:50 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 11:31 AM, drew d...@baseanswers.com wrote: On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:01 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 1:25 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton snip orcmid This might need to be separated for what the agreement is when people register/subscribe and provide information solicited to accomplish that. This seems like too broad an umbrella for what happens when folks register versus what happens when accessing sites versus what happens when sending an e-mail somewhere. /orcmid It would be good to link to the ToU from any registration. But note that we don't always have that access where it is a shared Apache service, for example CWiki. Nothing in the ToU speaks about emails, so that is red herring. A red herring? I don't think so - why should it only be valid if already there. The site references our mailing lists and certainly did, likely still does, IMO a comment on the public nature of mailing lists is really appropriate here. The point is this: a user can contribute to the mailing list without ever having visited the website. So posting ToU for the mailing list on a website is not going to really have any legal or even advisory effect.One thing that we could do is put ToU in the confirmation note we send to new list subscribers. Or even a link to a consolidated ToU on the website if that is how we do it. In any case, most of the ToU is in the nature of a notice: we are telling the user what will are doing, what we can do, and what we will do under certainly conditions. The main exception, where we are demanding something of the user, is if where we require a licence on their contributions. So that is the one thing where we cannot be casual. If we want to have an incoming licence on contributions that really needs to be baked into registration systems, list acknowledgement emails, etc. -Rob
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Sat, 2012-07-07 at 12:27 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 11:31 AM, drew d...@baseanswers.com wrote: On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:01 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 1:25 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton snip orcmid This might need to be separated for what the agreement is when people register/subscribe and provide information solicited to accomplish that. This seems like too broad an umbrella for what happens when folks register versus what happens when accessing sites versus what happens when sending an e-mail somewhere. /orcmid It would be good to link to the ToU from any registration. But note that we don't always have that access where it is a shared Apache service, for example CWiki. Nothing in the ToU speaks about emails, so that is red herring. A red herring? I don't think so - why should it only be valid if already there. The site references our mailing lists and certainly did, likely still does, IMO a comment on the public nature of mailing lists is really appropriate here. The point is this: a user can contribute to the mailing list without ever having visited the website. So posting ToU for the mailing list on a website is not going to really have any legal or even advisory effect.One thing that we could do is put ToU in the confirmation note we send to new list subscribers. Or even a link to a consolidated ToU on the website if that is how we do it. In any case, most of the ToU is in the nature of a notice: we are telling the user what will are doing, what we can do, and what we will do under certainly conditions. The main exception, where we are demanding something of the user, is if where we require a licence on their contributions. So that is the one thing where we cannot be casual. If we want to have an incoming licence on contributions that really needs to be baked into registration systems, list acknowledgement emails, etc. Well, I agree that this is a notice - I still feel it would appropriate to mention mailing list. What I've done just now is simply to move your text verbatim to the wiki - I'll add a paragraph for what I think is an apt way to address this. Give a read to that, and if you or anyone else thinks it's just our of place, well, that's why it's a white board, right ;-) //drew -Rob
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Wed, 2012-07-04 at 20:49 +0200, Hagar Delest wrote: Le mer. 04 juil. 2012 04:44:19 CEST, drew d...@baseanswers.com a écrit : Yes - it goes to the page on the website - a page I tried to get people to look at for fixup months ago - but there was no interest in doing so at the time, and yes as it stands it is just wrong. Weird, after that discussion, I remember seeing the page being redirected to something like the wiki. It had definitively stopped pointing to the Oracle page. Hagar *chuckling*...what you think my memory could be faulty - never.. well, once or twice, maybe. Now what was the question? //drew
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
Message du 06/07/12 14:21 De : drew *chuckling*...what you think my memory could be faulty - never.. well, once or twice, maybe. Now what was the question? I think that the question can be closed since the link is now pointing to thte correct page. Perhaps during an operation on the forum recently that link had been reverted to the old Oracle page. Hagar Une messagerie gratuite, garantie à vie et des services en plus, ça vous tente ? Je crée ma boîte mail www.laposte.net
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Fri, 2012-07-06 at 22:22 +0200, hagar.delest wrote: Message du 06/07/12 14:21 De : drew *chuckling*...what you think my memory could be faulty - never.. well, once or twice, maybe. Now what was the question? I think that the question can be closed since the link is now pointing to thte correct page. Perhaps during an operation on the forum recently that link had been reverted to the old Oracle page. Hagar Hi Hagar, You mean, I suppose, that the bottom link in the footer of each forum (just double checked each) links to: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use I think that is where it should point, and that is the page in need of update. Another option would be, perhaps, to point to this page http://www.openoffice.org/license.html instead - doesn't seem quite right though. //drew
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 5:06 PM, Dave Fisher dave2w...@comcast.net wrote: On Jul 6, 2012, at 1:57 PM, drew wrote: On Fri, 2012-07-06 at 22:22 +0200, hagar.delest wrote: Message du 06/07/12 14:21 De : drew *chuckling*...what you think my memory could be faulty - never.. well, once or twice, maybe. Now what was the question? I think that the question can be closed since the link is now pointing to thte correct page. Perhaps during an operation on the forum recently that link had been reverted to the old Oracle page. Hagar Hi Hagar, You mean, I suppose, that the bottom link in the footer of each forum (just double checked each) links to: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use I think that is where it should point, and that is the page in need of update. Would someone please JFDI? There have been 100 emails on this topic on ooo-dev and ooo-private. I think that is an argument against JFDI, not for it. If you are afraid it will be rejected then do a terms_of_use2 and then get feedback. If you think something will be rejected then you should make a lazy consensus proposal first. JFDI is for non-controversial changes. Between Dennis and Rob there is certainly some middle ground. Not really relevant. Other views have been raised that agree with neither Dennis nor me. So portraying our views as being the extremes within which we should seek middle ground is inaccurate and divisive. If you have a proposal to make, then make it, but without the editorial commentary, please. -Rob THANKS! Dave Another option would be, perhaps, to point to this page http://www.openoffice.org/license.html instead - doesn't seem quite right though. //drew
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
Hello everyone, Clean slate - alright! How about we just start with something everyone agrees on. The page at http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use is wrong. We either fix it or stop using it and remove it. But for today... If you look at this page http://user.services.openoffice.org/ it uses a footer matching the main site http://www.openoffice.org/license.html that is almost the same as the main site. So, could merge the current footer used at the individual forums and the footer at the landing page, dropping the link to the .../terms_of_use page on the main site. The copyright page link is good for the non-subscribed browser. Will add the privacy page link, and leav the current forum TOU used when subscribe in place, already translated to all languages. If that doesn't look like a waste of time to folks will put that together on an example page in the morning and post a link for review. //drew
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 7:28 PM, drew d...@baseanswers.com wrote: Hello everyone, Clean slate - alright! How about we just start with something everyone agrees on. Point of order. I've made a proposal, in this thread, just two days ago. it is a clean slate, based on nothing before it. I've received only two substantive comments, from Wolf and Dennis. Everyone else seems to be running around, trying to understand why the ToU have not been updated yet. If you have some comments on my proposal I'd love to hear them. Ditto, if Dave or anyone else does. The page at http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use is wrong. We either fix it or stop using it and remove it. But for today... If you look at this page http://user.services.openoffice.org/ it uses a footer matching the main site http://www.openoffice.org/license.html that is almost the same as the main site. So, could merge the current footer used at the individual forums and the footer at the landing page, dropping the link to the .../terms_of_use page on the main site. The copyright page link is good for the non-subscribed browser. Will add the privacy page link, and leav the current forum TOU used when subscribe in place, already translated to all languages. If that doesn't look like a waste of time to folks will put that together on an example page in the morning and post a link for review. If we're now going to have several competing proposals rather than iterating on a single one, then that's fine as well. But maybe it would make sense to put these on the wiki so we can look at them side by side? -Rob //drew
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 2:49 PM, Hagar Delest hagar.del...@laposte.netwrote: Le mer. 04 juil. 2012 04:44:19 CEST, drew d...@baseanswers.com a écrit : Yes - it goes to the page on the website - a page I tried to get people to look at for fixup months ago - but there was no interest in doing so at the time, and yes as it stands it is just wrong. Weird, after that discussion, I remember seeing the page being redirected to something like the wiki. It had definitively stopped pointing to the Oracle page. Hagar Is it possible that some of the page footers are hard-coded, rather than templated? -Wolf -- This Apt Has Super Cow Powers - http://sourcefreedom.com Open-Source Software in Libraries - http://FOSS4Lib.org Advancing Libraries Together - http://LYRASIS.org Apache Open Office Developer wolfhal...@apache.org
RE: Terms of Service on Forums
Let's step back a little. The markup that I created was designed to morph the Oracle terms of service to one that was similar but modified to use of ASF as the HOST and eliminate those considerations that do not apply (e.g., the use of distinct projects on the web site) under ASF custodianship. This approach was so folks could compare with what was already in place and produce a harmonious replacement. I'm not a lawyer and not prepared to say what is too much or too little. I agree that plain language statements are preferable. My favorite document of this kind is, after all, the Creative Commons Attribution Deed 2.0. However, there are some essential considerations, it seems to me: 1. Privacy should probably be separated as is commonplace on sites of this kind. Privacy should extend beyond what is done to support performance of the site and what the monitoring is, to embrace more clearly what is done with anything that is considered personally-identifiable information. In particular, the reliance on email addresses being made visible as a policy is something that users need to be aware of and why, and the need to be able to contact people by the e-mail address provided is also a matter of concern. If there is any kind of promise to be careful with personal data, that needs to be made in a way that the ASF can demonstrate diligence about and the ASF needs to be aware of the obligation the promise represents. Privacy statements should be dated and back versions should be accessible. 2. The Terms of Use should be clear about what the HOST (the ASF) is granting generally to users of the site and what contributors to the site are granting to the HOST and all Users, absent any clearly-established special cases (licenses, contribution agreements, etc.). The outgoing license is a clear condition of a TOU and not having one for readers of general web pages seems erroneious. The actions that the HOST will take without notice and at its own discretion need to be clear also. In this case, I think that the terms of use definitely need to be dated and back issues available. orcmid comments=more in-line below/ - Dennis -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2012 06:50 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Terms of Service on Forums On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: [ ... ] I created an issue that proposed a new terms of use that was consistent with the Oracle ones for ASF and would have not made this problem worse, as far as I can tell. That was long ago and it went nowhere. The JIRA issue is here: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-104. Here's the connected issue on our Bugzilla: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118518. I came to our Bugzilla because LEGAL-104 can't have attachments. The attachment on the Bugzilla provides a red-lined transformation of the Oracle ToU into one that could work for the forums, wikis, and web pages now under ASF custodianship. OK. I read that over. IMHO it is still too much. It is dressed up in chain mail armour, as befits a big corporation with the risk profile of a big corporation. Large corporations are a magnet for petty lawsuits. But the circumstances are different with the ASF. Our main concern is (or should be) clarity and helpfulness to the reader, not to protect our multi-billion dollar corporation. I''d also entirely separate the outgoing license question. This is not a ToU question. That can be covered separate by a license link on the various websites, which might be simple in some case (incubator site is 100% ALv2) and less so on some legacy sites. orcmid What do you mean by the incubator site? I disagree about ALv2 for http://www.openoffice.org since the honoring of ALv2 is more restrictive/intrusive than the incoming grant of legacy material requires. Furthermore, patent non-assertions were never collected. /orcmid So a minimal approach might look something like this, which could be applied across all of our websites: -- Consolidated Terms of Use for Apache OpenOffice Websites The Apache Software Foundation hosts several websites on behalf of the Apache OpenOffice project: -- under openoffice.org - under incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg - under cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS - under issues.apache.org/ooo/ -- under blogs.apache.org/ooo/ By your use of these websites you acknowledge that you have read these Terms and agree to them. orcmid I think it should apply to the site being accessed and from which the ToU is linked. Also, the By your use ... without even a click-through the claim of reading and agreement is about as corporate as it gets and indefensible. /orcmid 1. Privacy [ ... ] Additionally, some of websites have a user
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 12:09 AM, drew d...@baseanswers.com wrote: On Tue, 2012-07-03 at 20:11 -0700, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: @Rob, Yes, I am seeing what you are seeing. Concerning the ToU for the forums, it is the same as what was previously on the web site. While there is a license grant for non-code and other places where no other license is applied, the license is also to all Users. @Rob, @Drew, @Kay I created an issue that proposed a new terms of use that was consistent with the Oracle ones for ASF and would have not made this problem worse, as far as I can tell. That was long ago and it went nowhere. The JIRA issue is here: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-104. Here's the connected issue on our Bugzilla: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118518. I came to our Bugzilla because LEGAL-104 can't have attachments. The attachment on the Bugzilla provides a red-lined transformation of the Oracle ToU into one that could work for the forums, wikis, and web pages now under ASF custodianship. It addresses some of the cases that Rob also mentions. I stand by my analysis. You might want to see how to carve out what you want from that, since it is at least a start and the places where further customization may be called for are all identified. - Dennis Hi Dennis, You did a good job on it then too. I just took the time to go back and read over the exchange on the legal JIRA entry and a quick read, again, of your markup to the original TOU text. For a TOU link in the website, wiki and forum footer I think it is a good think to just finish this up and use it. The website no longer offers account creation so with the new TOU and the current http://www.openoffice.org/privacy.html , I suppose it would be done (for today :) where one does still have a difference between registered and non-registered users: - the media wiki already has http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Wiki:Copyrights so I suppose that would be done (for today) also. - the forums, just add a requirement that everything new is ALv2 in http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/ucp.php?mode=terms (and it's translations) At least it seems this simple to me, does it really need to be thought out a lot further then that? If someone has a specific proposal, can they stick it on the Cwiki as a draft and we can work on it a bit? As simple as possible, but no simpler. -Rob //drew Some months ago it was discussed with the ASF Board whether a privacy condition and safe-harbor setup was desired. That apparently didn't get anywhere.
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: @Rob, Yes, I am seeing what you are seeing. Concerning the ToU for the forums, it is the same as what was previously on the web site. While there is a license grant for non-code and other places where no other license is applied, the license is also to all Users. @Rob, @Drew, @Kay I created an issue that proposed a new terms of use that was consistent with the Oracle ones for ASF and would have not made this problem worse, as far as I can tell. That was long ago and it went nowhere. The JIRA issue is here: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-104. Here's the connected issue on our Bugzilla: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118518. I came to our Bugzilla because LEGAL-104 can't have attachments. The attachment on the Bugzilla provides a red-lined transformation of the Oracle ToU into one that could work for the forums, wikis, and web pages now under ASF custodianship. OK. I read that over. IMHO it is still too much. It is dressed up in chain mail armour, as befits a big corporation with the risk profile of a big corporation. Large corporations are a magnet for petty lawsuits. But the circumstances are different with the ASF. Our main concern is (or should be) clarity and helpfulness to the reader, not to protect our multi-billion dollar corporation. I''d also entirely separate the outgoing license question. This is not a ToU question. That can be covered separate by a license link on the various websites, which might be simple in some case (incubator site is 100% ALv2) and less so on some legacy sites. So a minimal approach might look something like this, which could be applied across all of our websites: -- Consolidated Terms of Use for Apache OpenOffice Websites The Apache Software Foundation hosts several websites on behalf of the Apache OpenOffice project: -- under openoffice.org - under incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg - under cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS - under issues.apache.org/ooo/ -- under blogs.apache.org/ooo/ By your use of these websites you acknowledge that you have read these Terms and agree to them. 1. Privacy Information about your use of the websites is collected using server access logs and a tracking cookie. The collected information consists of the following: The IP address from which you access the website; The type of browser and operating system you use to access our site; The date and time you access our site; The pages you visit; and The addresses of pages from where you followed a link to our site. Part of this information is gathered using a tracking cookie set by the Google Analytics service and handled by Google as described in their privacy policy . See your browser documentation for instructions on how to disable the cookie if you prefer not to share this data with Google. We use the gathered information to help us make our site more useful to visitors and to better understand how and when our site is used. Additionally, some of websites have a user registration systems that queries you for information such as name, password and email address. This information is collected, stored and used in order to provide you a unique login and to associate that login with your activity on the website. We endeavour keep this information private, but it may be revealed to a competent authority under a lawful order. By using this website, you consent to the collection of this data in the manner and for the purpose described above. 2. User submitted content By submitting content to the website, you agree that this content may be hosted on the website, for the benefit of other website users. Additionally, you agree that your submissions may be edited, modified, translated, copied, within the website. You warrant that you have sufficient rights to any content that you submit to the website necessary to grant the above license. If you wish to offer a broader license, to allow 3rd parties to reuse your content outside of this website, then you may do so, provided the license is compatible with the above requirements. Apache License 2.0 is especially recommended. Please mark the license prominently in your contribution. 3. Exclusions The websites at extensions.openoffice.org and templates.openoffice.org are not operated by the Apache Software Foundation and are not covered by this Terms. 4. Changes to these Terms We may change these Terms from time to time. When we make substantive changes we will also make an announcement on the ooo-announce mailing list. -- It addresses some of the cases that Rob also mentions. I stand by my analysis. You might want to see how to carve out what you want from that, since it is at least a start and
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 9:50 AM, Rob Weir robw...@apache.org wrote: On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote: @Rob, Yes, I am seeing what you are seeing. Concerning the ToU for the forums, it is the same as what was previously on the web site. While there is a license grant for non-code and other places where no other license is applied, the license is also to all Users. @Rob, @Drew, @Kay I created an issue that proposed a new terms of use that was consistent with the Oracle ones for ASF and would have not made this problem worse, as far as I can tell. That was long ago and it went nowhere. The JIRA issue is here: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-104. Here's the connected issue on our Bugzilla: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118518. I came to our Bugzilla because LEGAL-104 can't have attachments. The attachment on the Bugzilla provides a red-lined transformation of the Oracle ToU into one that could work for the forums, wikis, and web pages now under ASF custodianship. OK. I read that over. IMHO it is still too much. It is dressed up in chain mail armour, as befits a big corporation with the risk profile of a big corporation. Large corporations are a magnet for petty lawsuits. But the circumstances are different with the ASF. Our main concern is (or should be) clarity and helpfulness to the reader, not to protect our multi-billion dollar corporation. I''d also entirely separate the outgoing license question. This is not a ToU question. That can be covered separate by a license link on the various websites, which might be simple in some case (incubator site is 100% ALv2) and less so on some legacy sites. So a minimal approach might look something like this, which could be applied across all of our websites: -- Consolidated Terms of Use for Apache OpenOffice Websites The Apache Software Foundation hosts several websites on behalf of the Apache OpenOffice project: -- under openoffice.org - under incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg - under cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS - under issues.apache.org/ooo/ -- under blogs.apache.org/ooo/ By your use of these websites you acknowledge that you have read these Terms and agree to them. 1. Privacy Information about your use of the websites is collected using server access logs and a tracking cookie. The collected information consists of the following: The IP address from which you access the website; The type of browser and operating system you use to access our site; The date and time you access our site; The pages you visit; and The addresses of pages from where you followed a link to our site. Part of this information is gathered using a tracking cookie set by the Google Analytics service and handled by Google as described in their privacy policy . See your browser documentation for instructions on how to disable the cookie if you prefer not to share this data with Google. We use the gathered information to help us make our site more useful to visitors and to better understand how and when our site is used. Additionally, some of websites have a user registration systems that queries you for information such as name, password and email address. This information is collected, stored and used in order to provide you a unique login and to associate that login with your activity on the website. We endeavour keep this information private, but it may be revealed to a competent authority under a lawful order. By using this website, you consent to the collection of this data in the manner and for the purpose described above. 2. User submitted content By submitting content to the website, you agree that this content may be hosted on the website, for the benefit of other website users. Additionally, you agree that your submissions may be edited, modified, translated, copied, within the website. You warrant that you have sufficient rights to any content that you submit to the website necessary to grant the above license. If you wish to offer a broader license, to allow 3rd parties to reuse your content outside of this website, then you may do so, provided the license is compatible with the above requirements. Apache License 2.0 is especially recommended. Please mark the license prominently in your contribution. 3. Exclusions The websites at extensions.openoffice.org and templates.openoffice.org are not operated by the Apache Software Foundation and are not covered by this Terms. 4. Changes to these Terms We may change these Terms from time to time. When we make substantive changes we will also make an announcement on the ooo-announce mailing list. -- It addresses some of the cases that Rob
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
Le mer. 04 juil. 2012 04:44:19 CEST, drew d...@baseanswers.com a écrit : Yes - it goes to the page on the website - a page I tried to get people to look at for fixup months ago - but there was no interest in doing so at the time, and yes as it stands it is just wrong. Weird, after that discussion, I remember seeing the page being redirected to something like the wiki. It had definitively stopped pointing to the Oracle page. Hagar
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
The terms of usage on forum is actually at: http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/ucp.php?mode=terms There seems to be no terms of usage o wiki. It is outdated, but it does not contain any Oracle blah blah blah. Do we need lawer review for our updated forum term of usage? On 2012/07/04 07:44, Rob Weir said: Can someone take ownership of this issue? https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118939 Look at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php Then to the footer and the Policies and Terms of Use. This links to this page: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use That starts with This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle) It is nearly all wrong. I consider a graduation issue that we get this remedied. Would it make sense to harmonize the terms with the wiki? Both allow user/non-committer contributions. -Rob -- Best regards, imacat ^_*' ima...@mail.imacat.idv.tw PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc Woman's Voice News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/ Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/ Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/ Apache OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/ EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/ signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Rob Weir robw...@apache.org wrote: Can someone take ownership of this issue? https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118939 Look at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php Then to the footer and the Policies and Terms of Use. This links to this page: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use That starts with This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle) It is nearly all wrong. I consider a graduation issue that we get this remedied. Would it make sense to harmonize the terms with the wiki? Both allow user/non-committer contributions. -Rob Yes, when Dave pointed this out the other day, I saw this as well. We need to correct this page at least, and it would make perfect sense to me to use these terms for the wiki, the forums, and our main web site, www.openoffice.org, as well. I brought this up a few days ago but no reply to that. Re the web site -- these terms seemed to be adequate for Sun and for Oracle so why not us? But, it would probably be best to continue the web site discussion on the previous thread -- [DISCUSSION] (Re)use of Website Content -- MzK I would rather have a donkey that takes me there than a horse that will not fare. -- Portuguese proverb
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 8:09 PM, imacat ima...@mail.imacat.idv.tw wrote: The terms of usage on forum is actually at: http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/ucp.php?mode=terms So we are pointing to two different terms of use pages on the same forum? Even the page you point to has the other terms page linked in its header. There seems to be no terms of usage o wiki. It is outdated, but it does not contain any Oracle blah blah blah. Do we need lawer review for our updated forum term of usage? I think any lawyer would first tell us to pick a single terms of use statement ;-) On 2012/07/04 07:44, Rob Weir said: Can someone take ownership of this issue? https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118939 Look at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php Then to the footer and the Policies and Terms of Use. This links to this page: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use That starts with This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle) It is nearly all wrong. I consider a graduation issue that we get this remedied. Would it make sense to harmonize the terms with the wiki? Both allow user/non-committer contributions. -Rob -- Best regards, imacat ^_*' ima...@mail.imacat.idv.tw PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc Woman's Voice News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/ Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/ Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/ Apache OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/ EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 8:23 PM, Kay Schenk kay.sch...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Rob Weir robw...@apache.org wrote: Can someone take ownership of this issue? https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118939 Look at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php Then to the footer and the Policies and Terms of Use. This links to this page: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use That starts with This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle) It is nearly all wrong. I consider a graduation issue that we get this remedied. Would it make sense to harmonize the terms with the wiki? Both allow user/non-committer contributions. -Rob Yes, when Dave pointed this out the other day, I saw this as well. We need to correct this page at least, and it would make perfect sense to me to use these terms for the wiki, the forums, and our main web site, www.openoffice.org, as well. I brought this up a few days ago but no reply to that. Re the web site -- these terms seemed to be adequate for Sun and for Oracle so why not us? But, it would probably be best to continue the web site discussion on the previous thread -- [DISCUSSION] (Re)use of Website Content I'd keep the reuse issue separate. We're here to publish software. Creating a reusable website is nice, but not our primary purpose. We just need a basic terms of service that covers things like: 1) Privacy policy, including required notices for our use of Google Analytics 2) Statement that the user agrees to post only content that they own 3) Statement that user agrees to have their content hosted on the website We can go beyond that in terms of an outgoing license if we really wanted to, but it is not strictly necessary. And the fact we haven't managed to do that in over a year makes me think that keeping it basic, but accurate, is the most direct approach. Suggested quick fix: 1) Remove the Oracle terms from the Forum 2) Make the current link in the forum footer point to this page: http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/ucp.php?mode=terms 3) Make this page also include the content from the privacy policy here: http://www.openoffice.org/privacy.html (or link to it) 4) Ensure that the other NL forums either point to the same terms, or an accurate translation. 5) (Future) If someone wants to have an outgoing license then they should make a proposal and start a discussion on the forums about that. My two cents. -Rob -- MzK I would rather have a donkey that takes me there than a horse that will not fare. -- Portuguese proverb
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Tue, 2012-07-03 at 19:44 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: Can someone take ownership of this issue? https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118939 Look at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php Then to the footer and the Policies and Terms of Use. This links to this page: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use That starts with This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle) It is nearly all wrong. I consider a graduation issue that we get this remedied. Would it make sense to harmonize the terms with the wiki? Both allow user/non-committer contributions. -Rob Perhaps I'm mistaken - but - I thought it was rather decided to just let the TOU continue pointing to the main website page, the idea being fix it and cover the OO.o website site, forums and media wiki also. I suppose it's simply time now to actually re-write the TOU page on the main website and reap the rewards for all three services. //drew
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 10:18 PM, drew jensen drewjensen.in...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2012-07-03 at 19:44 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: Can someone take ownership of this issue? https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118939 Look at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php Then to the footer and the Policies and Terms of Use. This links to this page: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use That starts with This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle) It is nearly all wrong. I consider a graduation issue that we get this remedied. Would it make sense to harmonize the terms with the wiki? Both allow user/non-committer contributions. -Rob Perhaps I'm mistaken - but - I thought it was rather decided to just let the TOU continue pointing to the main website page, the idea being fix it and cover the OO.o website site, forums and media wiki also. Are you not seeing what I'm seeing? The TOU does not currently point to the main website page. Go to the forum and look at the bottom of the page where it says By any use of this Website, you agree to be bound by these Policies and Terms of Use. Then click the link and read. Continuing with what is there is entirely out of the question, right? It is Oracle's terms of use, assigning rights of the content to Oracle. Please someone tell me that they are also seeing this. -Rob I suppose it's simply time now to actually re-write the TOU page on the main website and reap the rewards for all three services. //drew
Re: Terms of Service on Forums
On Tue, 2012-07-03 at 22:32 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 10:18 PM, drew jensen drewjensen.in...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2012-07-03 at 19:44 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: Can someone take ownership of this issue? https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118939 Look at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php Then to the footer and the Policies and Terms of Use. This links to this page: http://www.openoffice.org/terms_of_use That starts with This Site and its contents are made available by Oracle America, Inc. for and on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries and affiliates under common control (Oracle) It is nearly all wrong. I consider a graduation issue that we get this remedied. Would it make sense to harmonize the terms with the wiki? Both allow user/non-committer contributions. -Rob Perhaps I'm mistaken - but - I thought it was rather decided to just let the TOU continue pointing to the main website page, the idea being fix it and cover the OO.o website site, forums and media wiki also. Are you not seeing what I'm seeing? The TOU does not currently point to the main website page. Go to the forum and look at the bottom of the page where it says By any use of this Website, you agree to be bound by these Policies and Terms of Use. Then click the link and read. Continuing with what is there is entirely out of the question, right? It is Oracle's terms of use, assigning rights of the content to Oracle. Please someone tell me that they are also seeing this. Yes - it goes to the page on the website - a page I tried to get people to look at for fixup months ago - but there was no interest in doing so at the time, and yes as it stands it is just wrong. So fix that page and the problem is gone isn't it. I'm agreeing with you - it's time to fix it. //drew -Rob I suppose it's simply time now to actually re-write the TOU page on the main website and reap the rewards for all three services. //drew
RE: Terms of Service on Forums
@Rob, Yes, I am seeing what you are seeing. Concerning the ToU for the forums, it is the same as what was previously on the web site. While there is a license grant for non-code and other places where no other license is applied, the license is also to all Users. @Rob, @Drew, @Kay I created an issue that proposed a new terms of use that was consistent with the Oracle ones for ASF and would have not made this problem worse, as far as I can tell. That was long ago and it went nowhere. The JIRA issue is here: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-104. Here's the connected issue on our Bugzilla: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118518. I came to our Bugzilla because LEGAL-104 can't have attachments. The attachment on the Bugzilla provides a red-lined transformation of the Oracle ToU into one that could work for the forums, wikis, and web pages now under ASF custodianship. It addresses some of the cases that Rob also mentions. I stand by my analysis. You might want to see how to carve out what you want from that, since it is at least a start and the places where further customization may be called for are all identified. - Dennis Some months ago it was discussed with the ASF Board whether a privacy condition and safe-harbor setup was desired. That apparently didn't get anywhere.
RE: Terms of Service on Forums
On Tue, 2012-07-03 at 20:11 -0700, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: @Rob, Yes, I am seeing what you are seeing. Concerning the ToU for the forums, it is the same as what was previously on the web site. While there is a license grant for non-code and other places where no other license is applied, the license is also to all Users. @Rob, @Drew, @Kay I created an issue that proposed a new terms of use that was consistent with the Oracle ones for ASF and would have not made this problem worse, as far as I can tell. That was long ago and it went nowhere. The JIRA issue is here: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-104. Here's the connected issue on our Bugzilla: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=118518. I came to our Bugzilla because LEGAL-104 can't have attachments. The attachment on the Bugzilla provides a red-lined transformation of the Oracle ToU into one that could work for the forums, wikis, and web pages now under ASF custodianship. It addresses some of the cases that Rob also mentions. I stand by my analysis. You might want to see how to carve out what you want from that, since it is at least a start and the places where further customization may be called for are all identified. - Dennis Hi Dennis, You did a good job on it then too. I just took the time to go back and read over the exchange on the legal JIRA entry and a quick read, again, of your markup to the original TOU text. For a TOU link in the website, wiki and forum footer I think it is a good think to just finish this up and use it. The website no longer offers account creation so with the new TOU and the current http://www.openoffice.org/privacy.html , I suppose it would be done (for today :) where one does still have a difference between registered and non-registered users: - the media wiki already has http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Wiki:Copyrights so I suppose that would be done (for today) also. - the forums, just add a requirement that everything new is ALv2 in http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/ucp.php?mode=terms (and it's translations) At least it seems this simple to me, does it really need to be thought out a lot further then that? //drew Some months ago it was discussed with the ASF Board whether a privacy condition and safe-harbor setup was desired. That apparently didn't get anywhere.
