Copyrights

[COBOLdinosaur]

One of the things we need to workout is copyright.  All the site needs from the mentors is a non-exclusive license to publish posted material and derivative works.  That leaves ownership of the material in the hands of the Mentor.  The site layouts and presentations are copyrighted by the site.

So everything should be fine except, for outside users who take content without permission.  As I am a believer in oen distribution of information I don't want to see restrictive copyrighting, but I also do not want to see content owned by mentors and/or the site being used without credit, so I propose using the creative commons format for copyright protection.

For those not familar with this type of licensing, this link should help:

http://creativecommons.org/

[Huntress]

Bookmarked for later reading...

This really is a good idea to protect the mentor's rights.

[Esopo]

I have not read the CC license, but I know your views on the issue and I'm sure you'll handle the licensing very well.

*****
Out of curiosity, are we going to stand a front against people posting our site's content without credit?

I was googling for stuff related to  my site the other day and I found someone had posted one of my scripts in a forum without any credit back to me. It was fun for me because it means people are liking my scripts, but it did piss me off to see someone taking the credit for it.

[Anonymous]

If you know of any bugs in the script as it is posted, then advertise them and discredit the copier!

But, first fix, them and then advertise your site as the original source.

[COBOLdinosaur]

My view on posting copyrighted material is:

• You don't post anything unless the copyright allows it
• You include the copyright notice
• If you post something from another source you give credit even if there is no copyright notice
• If you intentionally plagarize you get kicked off the site
• If you accidentally plagarize, you get warned; you fix it; and if you do it again it is considered intentional.

However, the policy we follow on the site in the long term is something that will have to be decided by an elect Council; except where it creates a legal exposure for me.

[nicholassolutions]

except where it creates a legal exposure for me.

I have a feeling that any infringement done through your site, even if you didn't do it, exposes you to potential lawsuits (however unlikely it actually is that anyone will follow through with them). I wholeheartedly support your bullet points above, and if I were you (which of course I'm not) this is one of the few things I would be fairly Draconian about. I doubt you'd actually have to go to court, but without a hard-nosed policy about this stuff I think you'd find yourself dealing with BS more often than you like to....that and ripping people off intellectually is the work of the devil  :evil:

[nicholassolutions]

Also, which of these licenses are we specifically voting to adopt -- or are we allowing mentors to choose any of them?:
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses

[COBOLdinosaur]

The idea of CC licenses is that each Mentor would be able to set their own restrictions.  The idea is to have a common format, and to use the CC language, but for each Mentor to customize for their needs.  I think if it did not exists we would almost have to invent it so each of use can apply the level of restrictions we want on our work.

[nicholassolutions]

Ahh I see now ( :idea1: duuuhhhhhh). That sounds great  :D

[COBOLdinosaur]

I think one of the things that we all realize is that anything we post on any site is going to get copied. If we use the CC GNU-GPL it basically has open source status which means copyright gets preserved, and anything it is used for has to be open source. That applies to postings.

The articles that we generate off the forum, will also be copied.  What the CC license does is clearly indicate that we expect copyright to be respect by those who use the work.  It is of course a different story for backend site software which is not made publicly available and that will have a double level of protection with a site copyright that covers presentation and format wrapped around the licensing agreement between the site and the developers. That code won't be published so it is not going to show up on someone else's site unless the developers sell or give the code to someone else.

[Esopo]

If we use the CC GNU-GPL it basically has open source status which means copyright gets preserved, and anything it is used for has to be open source.

I assume many of our visitors will be professionals stuck with a project that they are not in control of, and they will want code to use for those projects which are not and cannot be open sourced.

I think they standard license should protect the copyright and maybe demand a reference to the work, but I don't think it should force the open sourcing of our visitors' work.

[COBOLdinosaur]

That is one of the options on the CC copyrights is you can allow commercial use with copyright notice.  I think key here is that each Mentor will be able to deal with copyrights based on their own needs.  

You just use the link to your version of copyright.  I think in the end we all know that we have very little control over what happens to stuff we post, but with a CC copyright notice, we can at least respond when we run across our stuff being used inappropriately or without giving credit.

[CrYpTiC_MauleR]

Cd& the above wont have to do with the PHP dev team since we will be having a more defined license for us? Just want to make sure the PHP work uses the license being made and not the CC license. Matt and I are fixing up some problems with the PHP license and should be done shortly this week for one final review and poll.

[COBOLdinosaur]

Differenct scope CM the agreement for licensing we are working out covers code being written to operate the site, which is not expose to the general membership.  That is a licensing agreement between teh developers and teh site.

The copyright here is for code and other comments posted in the threads.  That is open to the public, and anyone can grab it.  So it basically is a copytight that allows them to grab it but regquires them to respect teh copyright.  We all know that many of them won't respect copyright, but it gives us a legally recognized right if we have to enforce copyright.