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Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you

diveintomark.org

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Re: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you

#21

Post by danw »

buro9 wrote: post #20

You know, I love this. Simply because I like when I purchase classics (not covered by copyright any longer) that I have the ability to choose the book based on criteria I cannot usually factor in. I can opt for quality paper, for a nice and well-spaced font, for good-binding, for a nicer jacket, for a specific translation. I like that there is the potential that I could purchase this book and be able to choose such t…

Personally I love Faber Finds for their dynamically generated covers http://www.faber.co.uk/faberfinds/

Re: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you

#22

Post by henrikschroder »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #19
thristian wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a lawyer, but my layman's understanding is something like this: * If you wrote/created/designed it, you get to pick the license. You can give it to some people under the GPL, you can give it to other people under the BSD license, you can negotiate all kinds of crazy licenses for arbitrary recompense you dream up - it's up to you. * If you received a copy of some GPL'd code, freely or in exchange for money, yo…

If you wrote/created/designed it, you get to pick the license I do get that part. But it doesn't help me understand the merits of any particular license. Thanks for your attempt to explain the GPL to me. I already knew what the GPL says, I just don't see how it achieves its goals of increasing my freedoms. For instance, I'm not allowed to use the source code of some of the software google has linked to GPL code. Even…

The GPL increases your freedoms by forcing people to give back, for free, the work they've done on top of GPL'd work they in turn received for free. With software as a service, this breaks down completely, because the derived work is never actually distributed.

The GPLv3 explicitly tries to deal with software as a service, but it's definitely more problematic since it's not as solidly grounded in copyright law as v2 is, it's harder to detect breaches of it, harder to prove breaches, and harder for the people in the justice system to understand it.

Re: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you

#23

Post by ig1 »

mikedouglas wrote: post #13
zck wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is the case here, but it might be the difference between the actual text itself and the representation, arrangement, and style of the text as exhibited in the book. This happens in music, where a given Mozart concerto, for example, is in the public domain, but that doesn't mean you can photocopy a given sheet music of the concerto and hand it out; the notes themselves are in the public domain, but t…

This was an issue recently with the Google Book Search deal. Even though the books were out of copyright or orphaned, Google owned the copyright to the scans, and would only give a non-transferable license back to the universities.

Scanning a public domain work doesn't give you copyright over it. See Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.

Re: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you

#25

Post by adamc »

patio11 wrote: post #5

I don’t know where that leaves you as a business. I suspect this leaves Apress at the "Require all further authors to contractually promise us, in writing, that they are assigning Apress the exclusive right to publish/distribute the content and have not written any legal landmines which contradict this clause into the sections we routinely don't read".

Or it may drive them to offer much lower royalties on books offered that way -- and perhaps only pay them out after the profitability has been established.

Re: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you

#26

Post by bad_user »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #17
buugs wrote: post #3

This is what free software / free licenses needs, people who parade and exemplify it rather than compare it to non-free licenses or even hate on and fight against non-free software, by force.

I don't entirely understand his explanation though. All I understand is that Mark approves of what happened. I do not understand why it is a good thing and why he wants the world to work like this. He didn't explain that. The whole logic of what and how you are allowed to charge for in the free software/content world seems completely arbitrary to me, even though I have read so much about it.

I think the point is that once Mark released his work under the GPL, then he no longer has any control on how his work is used or distributed, even though it might be in disagreement with his wishes ... and he accepts that, because that's what "Free" is all about.

... that in contrast to forcing people to abide by your rules, without explicitly saying that in the license (e.g. by activism, harassment and public insults ... for reference see for example GNU/Linux [1] or the endless discussions about apologists/traitors[2] ).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy

[2] http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/microsoft-codeplex-foundation

Re: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you

#27

Post by bad_user »

henrikschroder wrote: post #22
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wrote/created/designed it, you get to pick the license I do get that part. But it doesn't help me understand the merits of any particular license. Thanks for your attempt to explain the GPL to me. I already knew what the GPL says, I just don't see how it achieves its goals of increasing my freedoms. For instance, I'm not allowed to use the source code of some of the software google has linked to GPL code. Even…

The GPL increases your freedoms by forcing people to give back, for free, the work they've done on top of GPL'd work they in turn received for free. With software as a service, this breaks down completely, because the derived work is never actually distributed. The GPLv3 explicitly tries to deal with software as a service, but it's definitely more problematic since it's not as solidly grounded in copyright law as v2…

> The GPL increases your freedoms by forcing people to give back, for free, the work they've done on top of GPL'd work they in turn received for free

No, the GPL forces people to distribute the source code of their own modifications, but that's only on redistribution. That's why with software as a service this doesn't work.

This has to be emphasized, because that's its central strenght.

The majority of all software is made and run in-house, without ever being distributed. And open-source would not be what it is today without contributors that have SaaS as a business model.

> The GPLv3 explicitly tries to deal with software as a service

No it doesn't. The GPLv3 is still only a copyright license which only covers redistribution (as GPLv2). It is more problematic because it tries to define what distribution means (to prevent tivoization), and copyright laws have their own definitions, but it still is within normal bounds ... so it remains to be seen if it works, but FSF has got some pretty smart lawyers over there, and they did their homework.

The license that tries to deal with SaaS is AGPL. But that's not a copyright license anymore, and while it is considered to be "open-source", some people think that it shouldn't be, since it places restrictions on the actual usage of the software (like an EULA).

And you'll have a hard time convincing companies that have contributed to open-source to switch to AGPL. Hell will freeze over or a new gap in AGPL will be discovered before that happens. One way AGPL can be "monetized" is with dual-licensing. But that's just dishonest and definitely not free.

Re: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you

#28

Post by RyanMcGreal »

robin_reala wrote: post #16

So do Apress pay royalties to Mark currently, on a per unit sold basis? If these new people can publish under the GFDL then presumably Apress can (are?) as well.

I assume Apress is constrained by their contract with Mark.

Re: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you

#29

Post by RyanMcGreal »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #17
buugs wrote: post #3

This is what free software / free licenses needs, people who parade and exemplify it rather than compare it to non-free licenses or even hate on and fight against non-free software, by force.

I don't entirely understand his explanation though. All I understand is that Mark approves of what happened. I do not understand why it is a good thing and why he wants the world to work like this. He didn't explain that. The whole logic of what and how you are allowed to charge for in the free software/content world seems completely arbitrary to me, even though I have read so much about it.

From Pilgrim's letter to Apress:

> [M]aybe the problems you perceive are really opportunities in disguise.

Re: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you

#30

Post by 10ren »

ig1 wrote: post #23
mikedouglas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was an issue recently with the Google Book Search deal. Even though the books were out of copyright or orphaned, Google owned the copyright to the scans, and would only give a non-transferable license back to the universities.

Scanning a public domain work doesn't give you copyright over it. See Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.

"...which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright because the copies lack originality." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_....
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