[ILUG] ILUG AGM Announcement

[Paul O'Malley]

On Fri, 2004-10-15 at 19:50, Rick Moen wrote:
{Before I start: Wheeeee A top post, that is two that I know I did this
year!}
Hi,
Please understand this I am not advocating an approach I value them all 
and most likely fall in the middle - 
when you commit information you choose your licence BUT it defaults to X
for web Y for mail Z for something else etc etc etc as deemed correct.

> Many would argue that the attribution mechanisms of wikis and similar
> formal version-control systems suffice to counter this objection -- but 
> the problem remains of naive readers who don't understand how to
> interpret version histories and diffs.  So, yes, it's a real issue.

maybe - but then a  type of notice that says "read this before you
complain to anyone including your granny" that persists like the php
nuke copyright notice which has to live on every php nuke page if I
understand it correctly might just help here

<snip>
>     Copyright (C) 1995-2004 by Rick Moen. Verbatim copying,
>     distribution, and display of this entire article are permitted in any
>     medium, provided this notice is preserved. Alternatively, you may
>     create derivative works of any sort for any purpose, provided your
>     versions contain no attribution to me, and that you assert your own
>     authorship (and not mine) in every practical medium.
> 
> The second sentence exemplifies a concept invented by _Linux Journal_
> editor Don Marti, which he calls "bastard reverse copyleft".  (Its
> legal effect is untested.)


This is most interesting. IANAL and many other IANA* where * is lots of
different things. 

My read is that you renounce your rights to the copyright of the
article.
Then you try to impose a transfer of obligation to accept "credit" for
the article. In so saying "On your head be it for the content of the
derived document." Now for the interesting thing.

Let us say I take a document with this licence a paper on "FOO and
GENERAL". So I want to do a little change for stylistic reasons (STOP
LAUGHING NOW!) I offer it to the author and the author does not take the
change because I lack style by their criteria or some other random
reason. Now this document has the "bastard reverse copyleft" so I must
remove the copyright this has a legal implication but I am saved by
sentence two of the licence, or am I? Read on to see the daft conclusion
I have.

Time progresses as it usually does and I have issued it forth with me
asserting my own copyright as allowed by the licence. Guess what I see
as an issue. I can't use the same licence, why because I am forced to 
"assert my own authorship (and not the original authors) in every
practical medium"

Catch 22 I think what do you think?

Tell me at the AGM.

Yes Rick I know you can't be there but we still have mail ;-)

Regards,

Paul O'Malley

This copyrighted work is derived from an original work by Rick Moen is
copyright in the main Paul O'Malley and in part Rick Moen. If you can't
figure out which parts then you really should learn more*. 
*Learn more here: 
Lines that start with a > are Ricks the rest are mine.
Arguments over white space are pointless, I have removed Ricks and
replaced them with independent works of white space. 
IMHO mine are greater in an artistic sense. :-)

-- 
There are only so many words in the English language, you may have seen
some of them in this order before, does that mean that my thoughts are
not my own? Patenting ideas is just patently wrong.
http://www.tldp.org howto learn about linux