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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01/14/2014 05:28 PM, Colin McNamara
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:7BDB240D-7FE0-41CD-AABD-137180E17377@2cups.com"
type="cite">Rich, let me take another real world use case.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>First, let me reiterate. Stating copyright is for the
protection of the individual developer as well as the
corporations contributing. It elevates visibility of who owns
copyright.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:7BDB240D-7FE0-41CD-AABD-137180E17377@2cups.com"
type="cite">
<div><b>Real world use case - Aptira and Training-Guides</b></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Sean and I started a project within Docs a while back. This
goals of this project is to provide Open Source training
materials to the community. To achieve these goal we used a mix
of content included within OpenStack documentation. About
halfway through the effort, one of the guides that we used for a
large amount of content got refactored, forcing us to pivot. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Aptira had been participating significantly at that point,
and had <b>contributed their own training programs to the
effort. </b>That corporate contribution of significant
content was key to training-guides moving forward. Without a
clear a and concise copyright I don’t think it would have been
possible.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Either way, I feel like we are debating a philosophy point vs
the legal question that was posed earlier. The action that comes
out of this discussion is both guidance from the foundations
legal council and the opportunity for someone to submit a talk
exploring these items. </div>
</blockquote>
<br>
I posted the initial email, and it was a matter of philosophy, not
of law, from the beginning. So, yes, I hope we are debating
philosophy. This was never posed as a legal question. I know how the
legalities of it work, and they don't depend, even a little bit, on
a in-file copyright statement. You retain copyright whether or not
you state this in the .rst file. That's what the Berne Convention
says. (Individual jurisdictions vary on years that you have that and
other details. Presumably by the time that it expires, anywhere,
this particular content will have expired too.)<br>
<br>
I don't understand how your example supports putting copyright
statements in the rst files. You have a clear and concise copyright
without having your name in the .rst file. It comes from your
contributor license agreement with the OpenStack foundation, and the
history provided by the git logs.<br>
<br>
Perhaps I've been unclear. My complaint is not with you holding
copyright - you hold that copyright, by international law,
regardless of what I or anyone else says. My complaint is with a
name in a file, which demonstrably contributes to reluctance of new
contributors to make changes. The "visibility of who owns copyright"
makes contributors feel that they don't have the right to pitch in.
I've heard this from newbie contributors, on a dozen projects, for
15 years.<br>
<br>
To be clearer, I don't believe that raising the visibility of a
particular contributor or company should be a goal of any Open
Source project. It's not about you or me, it's about the community
and the project. You want visibility, point to the the Stackalytics
site. They have awesome stats there. Or point to the output of 'git
blame'. Indeed, whenever it becomes about raising the visibility of
a contributor, the whole project suffers, and it becomes harder, not
easier, for new folks to enter the project.<br>
<br>
When you contribute that file, you no longer "own" it, even though
you have copyright to portions of it. If you want to "own" it, then
don't contribute it to an Open Source project. Again, I'm not
talking about legalities, I'm talking about philosophy and the
*spirit* of Open Source. Sure, legally you might still "own" it in
some sense, but if that's what you care about, why are you
contributing it?<br>
<br>
So, I ask again, copyright "protects" from what/whom exactly? In the
example you gave, what "protection" did it give you? And,
specifically, what protection did it give you that it would not have
given you, equally, without your name in the .rst file?<br>
<br>
I have considerable experience, myself, with contributing
copyrighted content to Open Source projects. In particular, I
contributed large portions of my books and company training
materials to the Apache httpd documentation. My name isn't in any of
those documents, which hasn't hurt the sales of my books, nor did it
hurt the sales of my training classes when I was doing that
full-time. Nor did it result in my forfeiting my copyright. I still
retain copyright on those contributions, but now that they have been
modified by dozens of other people it wouldn't be reasonable for me
to assert ownership of any of that content - it's a collaborative
work now ... as is the example that you cited.<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Rich Bowen - <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:rbowen@redhat.com">rbowen@redhat.com</a>
OpenStack Community Liaison
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://openstack.redhat.com/">http://openstack.redhat.com/</a></pre>
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