nettime's_legal_dictionary on Tue, 30 Jul 2002 22:45:00 +0200 (CEST)


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<nettime> A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I got a PL digest [shand|nakov|recktenwald]


Subject: Re: <nettime> question: GPL or OPL?
     "Brett Shand" <brett@earthlight.co.nz>
     Novica Nakov <novica@bagra.net.mk>
     Heiko Recktenwald <uzs106@ibm.rhrz.uni-bonn.de>

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From: "Brett Shand" <brett@earthlight.co.nz>
Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 15:55:24 +1200
Subject: Re: <nettime> question: GPL or OPL?

On 29 Jul 02, at 10:12, pankalia@netscape.net wrote:

> does anybody knows the difference between GPL and OPL?. 

As far as I understand it (and by all that is merciful I am not a lawyer) 
the OPL (which includes both the Open Publication License and the 
Open Content License) relates to the publication of "high quality, well 
maintained" content on the web. The license says:

"In plain English, the [OPL] license relieves the author of any liability 
or implication of warranty, grants others permission to use the 
Content in whole or in part, and insures that the original author will be 
properly credited when Content is used. It also grants others 
permission to modify and redistribute the Content if they clearly mark 
what changes have been made, when they were made, and who made 
them. Finally, the license insures that if someone else bases a work on 
OpenContent, that the resultant work will be made available as  
OpenContent as well." (see: http://www.opencontent.org/).

The GPL relates to sharing software. There are several GNU public 
licenses, and CopyLeft is one of them, but basically they ensure that 
when software is copied in any medium and then changed that the 
freedom to change the software must be passed on to the next level 
of users/developers. All you wanted to know and much more than you 
wanted to know is at:

http://www.fsf.org/licenses/licenses.html

Brett
-----------------------------------
"Obey little, resist much." Walt Whitman

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Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 09:10:24 +0200
From: Novica Nakov <novica@bagra.net.mk>
Subject: Re: <nettime> question: GPL or OPL?

pankalia@netscape.net writes:

| about publishing texts on the web:
| does anybody knows the difference between GPL and OPL?. 

GPL is a license that is designed for writing free software.
I guess it could be used for written documents as well.
However FSF has another license that covers written documents - FDL. 
I think that it can be applied to everything except fiction writings.

I don't know what OPL is.

| And if we use the "C" and the "copyleft" statement it means we use the
| GPL?

When something is "copyleft" that means that it is uncopyrighted. But
you should point out under which terms it is uncopyrighted, since there
are several copyleft licenses available.

-- 
Novica

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Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 14:16:43 +0200 (CEST)
From: Heiko Recktenwald <uzs106@ibm.rhrz.uni-bonn.de>
Subject: Re: <nettime> question: GPL or OPL?

Hi,

On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Rick Bradley wrote:

> OPL should be applied to texts.  The BSD license should be applied to

First you mention BSD ;-)

> code.  While it is quite clearly all the same, lawyers tend to disagree.

Then you raise an interesting question. 

The most important thing is to make the will clear. What shall be given
away ? And what not.

The will to giveaway can have many stages and is not accepted in all
jurisdictions, IMHO it is accepted in germany for software only.


H.

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