[Desktop Help] Copyright Issue - Clarification Needed

[Stephen M. Webb]

On 01/13/2014 08:48 PM, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:
> So I think this could be good for more discussion in the past the Doc Team has used Creative Commons with attribution to
> the Doc Team. But we don't do a very good job of making contributors aware that their contributions are being
> automatically licensed under the CC while some projects have a contributor agreement that outlines such.

This should be be outlined in plain terms somewhere obvious (I'm not saying it is, I'm saying it should be).  There
should be a hyperlink in the footer of every online page that takes the reader to a place where this is stated in clear
terms, and similar front matter text in every printed copy.

It's also orthogonal to the issue of copyright.  In many jurisdictions an author of a work can not give up copyright,
nor do we want hem to in this case.  Copyright at all times is retained by the author, and the aggregate work is
distributed under the the CC0 license.  There should be a web page describing this, and at the very least it should be
on the overview page at [1] and similarly for sub-teams.

> One concern I have had with merging in GNOME doc is that if we transition to being our own upstream we will have to
> rework all of our doc to ensure that GNOME contributions do not exist in it or maintain attribution and respect any
> licensing they release their documentation under.

I don't imagine this will be an onerous task.

> Also, contributors come and go from the Documentation Team so how do we respect them and attribute them perpetually?

I think the respect comes from perpetual attribution, which should probably come in the for of a list of contributors
that is carried forward from version to version and is distributed with the documents.  This is how many software
projects do it; I know GCC (the GNU Compiler Collection, a tool used to build computer programs) goes back over 20 years
and lists everyone who has ever contributed. Ever.

[1] https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-doc

-- 
Stephen M. Webb  <stephen.webb at canonical.com>