[Harmony-Drafting] Licensing for website content and agreements

Amanda Brock amanda.brock at canonical.com
Wed Jun 8 11:01:22 UTC 2011


Hi there

I have made my comments in line.

All the best

Amanda

Amanda Brock, General Counsel
Canonical
27 Floor, Millbank Tower
London SW1P 4QP
+44 2076302446
+44 7809389878
Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings
www.canonical.com


On 07/06/11 19:25, consiliens wrote:
> At least $35,000 has gone into creating the harmony agreements.  
> Project Harmony has positioned itself as a community project, and now 
> with the work almost done the final deliverables likely won't be 
> released under a free culture license
It is a free licence.
> because of a desire to maximally restrict the content.
The project group agreed that the content, as with other Open Source 
documents was standard and as it carried the name Harmony, like GPL etc, 
would not be something that could be amended and still called Harmony. I 
don't believe that is in any way out of kilter with normal practises, 
but if I am missing something let me know.
>
> Here's a slight variation on Mark's proposal.
>
> "Except where otherwise noted, all content on this site and the 
> agreements are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 
> Unported License. The Project Harmony contribution agreements may be 
> copied and distributed verbatim under the Harmony brand. The Project 
> Harmony contribution agreements may be modified, but modified versions 
> may not distributed under the Harmony brand; provided that such 
> modified versions may include the following notice: "This Contribution 
> Agreement is a modified version of contribution agreements developed 
> by Project Harmony."
I think a simple licence along the lines of Allison's statement is fine, 
then we can add an attribution statement if this is the general consensus.
>
> The "following notice" section could be considered the required 
> attribution component of the CC BY license.
The CC licence creates more terms than I think we actually need and I 
think the model used by GPL is enough. Is there any actual objection to 
us following the GPL model. Surely this is just another open source 
model. Again if I am missing something please let me know.
>
> A standard widely adopted license is highly preferable if the goal is 
> "to make it easy for developers and lawyers to review the
> agreements" (quoted from Allison).  The issue is not 
> "over-engineering" vs simplicity,
I think it is. We don't need a full licence. Go, use it any way you like 
without changing the wording. If you use it any other way then attribute 
and note that it is modified.
> it's a question of inequity and rights distribution.  CC BY, according 
> to Allison, "does seem like a close fit to what we've talked about" 
> and explicitly grants the public rights to the content in a way that 
> doesn't cause problems with Harmony's right to endorse agreements.  
> The "simplicity" of the proprietary all rights reserved no derivatives 
> allowed approach is undesirable and not in the public interest.

However, if the consensus is that we should use CC, then lets use CC.

Does anyone else have a strong feeling?

I do want to say that whichever route we go down, saying that this stops 
the document being community focused is really not right.....

with best wishes

Amanda
>
> On 06/07/2011 10:12 AM, Radcliffe, Mark wrote:
>> I suggest being more explicit:
>>
>> Except where otherwise noted, all content on this site is licensed 
>> under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. The Project 
>> Harmony contribution agreements may be copies and distributed 
>> verbatim under the Harmony brand. The Project Harmony contribution 
>> agreements may be modified, but modified versions may not distributed 
>> under the Harmony brand; provided that such modified versions may 
>> include the following notice: "This Contribution Agreement is a 
>> modified version of contribution agreements developed by Project 
>> Harmony."
>> .
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: harmony-drafting-bounces at lists.harmonyagreements.org 
>> [mailto:harmony-drafting-bounces at lists.harmonyagreements.org] On 
>> Behalf Of Carlo Piana
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2011 3:44 AM
>> To: harmony-drafting at lists.harmonyagreements.org
>> Subject: Re: [Harmony-Drafting] Licensing for website content and 
>> agreements
>>
>> Seems a good and balanced suggestion
>>
>> Carlo
>>
>>
>>
>> On 06/07/2011 10:34 AM, Amanda Brock wrote:
>>> I am against a licence for the licence and would follow the approach
>>> suggested by Allison re GPL.
>>>
>>> Anyone else have any thoughts?
>>>
>>> Amanda
>>>
>>> Amanda Brock, General Counsel
>>> Canonical
>>> 27 Floor, Millbank Tower
>>> London SW1P 4QP
>>> +44 2076302446
>>> +44 7809389878
>>> Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings
>>> www.canonical.com
>>>
>>>
>>> On 06/06/11 21:40, Allison Randal wrote:
>>>> On 06/06/2011 12:29 PM, consiliens wrote:
>>>>> I thought the agreements were using CC BY?  After reading your 
>>>>> response
>>>>> it seems I'm mistaken and the harmony agreements are released under a
>>>>> custom license.
>>>> The proposal in this thread was:
>>>>
>>>> ------
>>>> Except where otherwise noted, all content on this site is licensed 
>>>> under
>>>> a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Everyone is permitted to
>>>> copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Harmony contributor
>>>> agreements. Modified versions of the agreements, however, should 
>>>> not be
>>>> called "Harmony" agreements.
>>>> ------
>>>>
>>>> So, the website content as CC-BY, but the agreements themselves as
>>>> "distribute verbatim is fine, change the name if you modify them". 
>>>> CC-BY
>>>> seems like massive over-engineering for the agreements. Look at GPL 
>>>> for
>>>> their simple terms for the license itself "distribute verbatim is 
>>>> fine,
>>>> no changes allowed". Apache doesn't even bother with specifying terms
>>>> for their license or contributor agreement, and neither do many 
>>>> others.
>>>>
>>>> But, if the group generally wants a license for the license, CC-BY 
>>>> does
>>>> seem like a close fit to what we've talked about. Perhaps we could 
>>>> make
>>>> the second sentence just clarification, as "This means that 
>>>> everyone is
>>>> permitted to copy and distribute..."
>>>>
>>>> Allison
>>>> _______________________________________________
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