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Re: [ossig] Copyright Laws
some generic guidelines and interpretations will be good. we will
probably have to put the usual 'consultant' disclaimers.
there is already a topic for 'open source legal' in the asiaosc.org site:
http://www.asiaosc.org/topic_3.html
http://www.asiaosc.org/enwiki/page/Legal_issues_and_OSS.html
http://www.asiaosc.org/enwiki/page/Common_OSS_licenses.html
watch out for the 'copyleft' definition. can we take out this phrase ? i
will probably be bombed by some of the guys here for suggesting this.
but this 'copyleft' definition is like ammo to the fud cannons. to the
less informed, it is like oss is not covered by copyright laws and it
has its own set of 'copyleft' laws. once i contribute to an oss
projects, i have lost all 'rights' to my portion (this is the current
perception of the mdtca) which is totally untrue.
as an original code contributor, i still retain ownership over my
portion and i can contribute to any gpl / mpl / lgpl / bsd product that
i want to. i can even sell it to microsoft. just make sure that you
comment your codes clearly. and if someone does pay you millions, don't
forget to belanja teh tarik and pisang goreng for the rest of us.
to the mimos guys, can we have a round of contributions to revise the
content on the asiaosc.org site ?
maybe a non-profit organisation for malaysian oss contributors will also
be good. i can contribute through this organisation, who can archieve my
codes as a record, then that organisation contributes the code to the
specific oss project / community. probably something like an oss
publisher that is equivalent to a book or music publisher.
at the very least, we can count how many lines of codes that we have
actually contributed to the global community. whether the codes is of
any use, is of course, another matter.
uwe said that there is not much opportunity to start anything from
'scratch'. dinesh has said that even add-ons is still innovation.
and i have this little proposal in front of me that is going to merge 2
gpl applications into 1 gpl product which is probably unique. it has
modules for calendering / scheduling, document manager, sales,
purchasing, accounting, inventory, manufacturing. i have never seen an
accounting software with scheduling, so this will probably be a first.
at the moment, all my contribution will be derivative - changing names,
creating links, merging the database tables together, sharing the
session ids, etc. because all my work is derivative, i will not own any
portion of the end product. except for the cd cover, of course, i can
put my copyright notice there. since the language is php, i will be
giving out the source codes anyway. uwe, will probably think i am a
cheat, but designing a cd cover is not easy :) :)
Raja Iskandar Shah
http://riscniaga.netfirms.com
----- Original Message -----
From: SianLun Lau <wahlau@gmx.net>
Date: Friday, May 28, 2004 3:14 pm
Subject: Re: [ossig] Copyright Laws
> On Fri, 28 May 2004 14:51:02 +0800
> "Raja Iskandar Shah" <ris.riscniaga@time.net.my> wrote:
>
> > from unix source codes and derived works from that. just because
> > linux works like unix, is not a basis for copyright infringement.
> [snipped]
>
> i do thank you (and you guys) for the information. had thought about
> this stuffs long ago, but just no time and no resources and no brain
> to start understanding all the law stuffs on licensing and various law
> issues on OSS...
>
> but without this understanding, any oss developer (and even users)
> will face problems sooner or later. he might get himself burnt by not
> knowing certain infringement somewhere in his code, or perhaps got
> cheated/stolen/pisang goreng'ed somewhere after hitting some success
> (or not).. etc etc.
>
> that brings me back to an idea i had not long ago... is there any
> faq/wiki on such issues so far? at least a suitable site where
> faq/knowlesge base on licensing and copyright/lefts are stated for
> fellow malaysian oss-ers/wannabes?
>
> if not, anyone wanna join me starting one? i seriously have no idea,
> but with all the experts here, i don't think that is a hard job to
> start.
>
> thanks...
>
> regards,
> SianLun
>
>
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