changing content licenses (OPL => CC BY SA)

Eric Christensen eric at christensenplace.us
Thu Jun 25 15:40:53 UTC 2009


On Thu, 2009-06-25 at 17:32 +0200, Zach Oglesby wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 11:24:13AM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> > On 06/25/2009 08:37 AM, Chris Tyler wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2009-06-24 at 18:58 -0700, Karsten Wade wrote:
> > >> The Docs Team has recently reached consensus to change licenses that
> > >> cover the various full-size guides the team works on, such as the
> > >> Release Notes and the Installation Guide.  Currently the works are
> > >> under the OPL 1.0, and the intention is to switch to the CC BY SA 3.0.
> > > 
> > > I agree that CC is a much better choice than OPL.
> > > 
> > > How do we make this relicensing work? I.e., if contributor X agreed that
> > > their content could be used under the OPL, how is it that we can just
> > > take that content and distribute it under a different license? I don't
> > > remember if the CLA has any wording on this. (Obviously the intention of
> > > the licenses is very similar, but nonetheless it seems like a murky
> > > situation. We did have someone withdraw from Fedora and take their toys
> > > with them when we last made a license change on the the wiki, IIRC).
> > 
> > Well, basically, we really should ask the contributors to consent to the
> > relicensing, and get their "written" permission in email. Technically,
> > these contributions were made under the terms of the CLA, and unless
> > those folks explicitly stated that their contributions were under the
> > OPL, Fedora is technically able to relicense those contributions however
> > we desire.
> > 
> > I say "technically" a lot there, because I do not want to leverage that.
> > I think the clear intent of contributors contributing to an OPL licensed
> > document is that their contributions are under OPL terms. In fact, I
> > want to remove that loophole in the next revision of the Fedora CLA.
> > 
> > So, we should just go ahead and get permission from all the contributors
> > (writers and translators) to relicense their works, and if anyone does
> > not give permission, we should remove/replace their contribution.
> > 
> > ~spot
> 
> That is a large task, Im not sure an email chain would be the best way to handel that, however I am not sure what is.

Could we setup a vote and give access to all those in the groups of
Docs, translators, etc and if we get any no votes we request them send a
message to someone or a group or a list and explain why they don't want
to change?

I don't know how to handle contacting everyone that has submitted to the
wiki if we are going to change licenses there.

Thoughts?

-- 
Thanks,
Eric Christensen
Fedora Docs Project Lead

Fedora Talk: 5102043                  Phone: 919-424-0063 x 5102043
E-Mail: sparks at fedoraproject.org      SIP: sparks at talk.fedoraproject.org
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