Base Guide copyright and contributors

Hi Jean,

1) The OOo version of the existing chapters has not been published,
and I understand that Dan Lewis is writing the LO version and OOo
version in parallel. Therefore IMO the copyright page does not need
the Acknowledgements section stating "This chapter is based upon..."
with the list of contributors to the OOo chapter; all of those
contributors should instead be listed in the Contributors section of
both books and the Acks section removed.

2) As this book is unpublished, IMO it is a "new" document and could
be licensed under Apache and CC-BY-SA as I suggested in a previous
note... as long as all contributors agree. I believe we can contact

From a copyright law standpoint, if the work can be downloaded, then it

has already been made available to the public - which under copyright
law is sufficient to be considered as "publishing" in some
jurisdictions. It can not then become a "new" document simply because it
has gone from public draft to "public final". Your understanding or
interpretation of the word "published" as I appear to understand it
seems to equate more to "documentation team approved release".

For example, the public can already access and download Base related
documentation here :

http://media.libreoffice.org/cmis/browser/English/Documentation/Base%20Guide/Draft

The licenses of these documents, unless stated otherwise therein, are
CC-BY-SA, in order to be in agreement with the terms of use of the TDF
infrastructure.

Note that I'm not against the approach, merely pointing out what I see
as a flaw in the reasoning based on the underlying tenets of copyright law.

If the documentation project really wanted to keep this as "unpublished"
(i.e. not made available to the public), then it would have to hide
access to the drafts and proofed stages of the site under the
media.libreoffice.org address, and have some kind of binding agreement
for the contributors of the documentation agreement that would oblige
them to recognise a work as being made available only when it attained
the status "published". As you will probably appreciate, this would
probably attract a fair deal of criticism, possibly be fairly complex to
set in motion, and would probably deter many from participating (who
would want to sign up to something like that, especially for something
they do mainly in their spare time?)

Alex

Apologies for oversimplifying and technical inaccuracy. You are correct
about what constitutes publication. However, my real point was and is that
the authors of a document (draft or published) can choose to change the
license on the document.

--Jean

Hi Jean,

1) The OOo version of the existing chapters has not been published,
and I understand that Dan Lewis is writing the LO version and OOo
version in parallel. Therefore IMO the copyright page does not need
the Acknowledgements section stating "This chapter is based upon..."
with the list of contributors to the OOo chapter; all of those
contributors should instead be listed in the Contributors section of
both books and the Acks section removed.

2) As this book is unpublished, IMO it is a "new" document and could
be licensed under Apache and CC-BY-SA as I suggested in a previous
note... as long as all contributors agree. I believe we can contact

>From a copyright law standpoint, if the work can be downloaded, then it
has already been made available to the public - which under copyright
law is sufficient to be considered as "publishing" in some
jurisdictions. It can not then become a "new" document simply because it
has gone from public draft to "public final". Your understanding or
interpretation of the word "published" as I appear to understand it
seems to equate more to "documentation team approved release".

For example, the public can already access and download Base related
documentation here :

http://media.libreoffice.org/cmis/browser/English/Documentation/Base%20Guide/Draft

The licenses of these documents, unless stated otherwise therein, are
CC-BY-SA, in order to be in agreement with the terms of use of the TDF
infrastructure.

Note that I'm not against the approach, merely pointing out what I see
as a flaw in the reasoning based on the underlying tenets of copyright

law.

If the documentation project really wanted to keep this as "unpublished"
(i.e. not made available to the public), then it would have to hide
access to the drafts and proofed stages of the site under the
media.libreoffice.org address, and have some kind of binding agreement
for the contributors of the documentation agreement that would oblige
them to recognise a work as being made available only when it attained
the status "published". As you will probably appreciate, this would
probably attract a fair deal of criticism, possibly be fairly complex to
set in motion, and would probably deter many from participating (who
would want to sign up to something like that, especially for something
they do mainly in their spare time?)

Alex

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Hi :slight_smile:
Simplifications can help us understand and build-up until we really know what's going on. It was a good starting point and discussion has helped clarify. I am still not sure who currently owns the copyright on the books. I think i am getting there tho. Feedback from the ASF and from people that are pretty knowledgeable about this area of Law has been interesting.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: