[Harmony-Drafting] Licensing for website content and agreements
consiliens
consiliens at gmail.com
Tue Jun 7 18:25:37 UTC 2011
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 because of a desire to maximally restrict the content.
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."
The "following notice" section could be considered the required
attribution component of the CC BY license.
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, 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.
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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Harmony-Drafting mailing list
>>> Harmony-Drafting at lists.harmonyagreements.org
>>> http://lists.harmonyagreements.org/mailman/listinfo/harmony-drafting
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