Re: Documentation License

[Matthew East <mdke ubuntu com>]

Hi Luis,

On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Luis Villa <luis tieguy org> wrote:
> "A transfer of copyright ownership ... is not valid unless an
> instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is
> in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such
> owner's duly authorized agent."[1]
>
> UK law has a similar provision (UK Copyright, Design and Patents Act
> 1988, s. 90(3).)

Interesting - that would appear to put a block on the idea. However it
would be interesting to pursue the question of whether submitting
patches or pushing to a revision control system could be considered a
signature.

Apart from anything else, if this is not possible, then it is probably
be necessary to rethink the current copyright declarations of the user
guide, which seem to purport that the copyright holders are Sun
Microsystems and Shaun, respectively.

http://library.gnome.org/users/user-guide/stable/index-info.html.en

My idea really was just an extension of that.

Anyway, my vote goes to dual-licensing with cc-by-sa and gfdl, and an
attempt to contact previous contributors for their permission to use
material under the chosen license.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF