Licensing issues discussion?

Uhm, did the thread about the current licensing problems with RepRap seriously just go "poof"?

I don't have an axe to grind on the issue, and I'm happy to see the discussion locked, but I put a lot of time into trying to write calm, thoughtful and sourced explanations to be a searchable reference for the next time this issue comes up. It's disappointing to see discussion questions nuked by outright deleting all of that information that Lee or I took time to put together and explain.



I'm not any more of a fan of the licensing problems than Forrest is -- but I don't think that by ignoring issues and censoring discussion that the problems will somehow go away. As RepRap (hopefully) continues to get more popular, this licensing quandary will unfortunately only become more exacerbated.


--clint

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2009 02:58PM by HanClinto.

It does indeed seem very odd that the whole thread, and no others, has just vanished. Still, in the absence of any information to the contrary, I am going to assume that it's simply a technical fault rather than censorship (why would anyone want to censor a reprap forum post!?). If someone did purposefully kill it, how about you let us know why you killed it so we don't waste our time trying to contribute to the community in areas that you, whoever you are, don't want.

As they say, nothing is ever lost on the Internet, so thanks to the unlimited powers of google reader's feed cache (sadly the wayback machine only had the first post), here is the entire thread, sans timestamps and the odd bit of formatting:

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from General by haloscope

This page (I found this by clicking on some google adsense) looks like its been ripped whole cloth from the various open source RepRap pages: [reprap.weebly.com] Thoughts?

from General by Forrest Higgs

That's what they're doing. Looking at the web address, I have an idea of who it might be, too. Keep in mind that there is absolutely nothing, to my knowledge, illegal or even unethical about what this person is doing.

from General by haloscope

First, I admire their entrepreneurial spirit. Secondly, I would respectfully disagree. I find it somewhat doubtful that whoever this person is has managed to secure the permission of all copyright holders involved. There are a lot of people involved in this project - and most of their work is probably covered by the GNUv2 license. However, some of those pictures appear to be from various blog entries. I don't see any such free licensure notices on the builders.reprap.org or blog.reprap.org blogs. Off topic, I thoroughly enjoy your blog.

from General by Forrest Higgs

I guess the way I look at it is that if I publish anything on the Reprap website it's open source and anybody can use it for whatever they want.

from General by haloscope

That's a very reasonable opinion. However, I'm not sure it is safe to assume all other participants feel the same way. If a copyright attaches with the creation of a work, then someone who uses that material without first asking for permission is facing potential problems. Anyhow, I was merely bringing this to the attention of the RR community in case anyone cared.

from General by jgilmore

I thought the point of the GPL is that we weren't allowed to care about such things - "do anything you want, as long as those you give it to can to" is pretty much the credo. Oh, wait. Isn't reprap GPLed? It might be BSD-style, in which case it's pretty much "do whatever you want, we don't care". I don't like that option nearly as much, GPL seems much more appropriate to me. Either way, there is nothing wrong or illegal about reselling the information. You could argue that there is something immoral about not notifying your customers that they can get all this for free. And I think you'd be right, but it is not required by the licenses. The only way it'd be illegal is if he's removing the copyright notices, or distributing it under a different license.

from General by HanClinto

The entire RepRap project is indeed under the GPL. "For this purpose the words "software" and "library" in the GNU General Public Licence are taken to mean any and all computer programs computer files images data results documents and all other copyright information available from the RepRap project. " For instance, those images on the front page of the Weebly site are taken from the ItemsMade page of the RepRap wiki. Sadly, the GPL is viral, meaning that if you include one piece of GPL content in your work (such as if he uses any images from the RepRap website in his for-sale DVD manual), then I believe that while he is perfectly within his right to sell compiled copies of his DVD, he must also provide the sources and the full text of the GPL to anyone who asks. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but if he includes GPL content such as pictures and tutorials from RepRap in his compilation, then am I right in saying that he is perfectly able to sell it so long as he also gives away all of the source files for free? "The only way it'd be illegal is if he's removing the copyright notices, or distributing it under a different license." If he's not including the GPL license for those images (and any copied documents or programs that he's distributing), then it would seem clear that he's not complying with the terms of the GPL. I'm not a copyleftist, so I'm probably not very qualified to say who is complying with the ideals of the GPL and who isn't. --clint

from General by haloscope

@John: I must respectfully disagree. Let's assume the content of their book and DVD include such things as pictures and text from the RepRap blogs. As I understand the GPL, you can do basically anything you want with the thing under the license. Let's pretend person A starts building a RepRap and blogs about it - complete with pictures, text, etc. Now, person B comes along and goes to the RepRap.org page and compiles all the info into an ebook and DVD. BUT, they also harvest some information from person A's blog. Just because person A has a blog and that blog is about their GPL RepRap machine doesn't mean all of their hard work - the photos, text, etc - is also part of the GPL. If you don't like this example, let's extend it a little further. Suppose person A builds the RepRap in person B's garage and its person B's blog, not person A's. Just because person B takes a picture of the RepRap in his house doesn't make the picture a GPL picture or the contents of their blog. To use your theory, if someone has a little GPL part in a much larger product, the entire product must be under the GPL. But, what if someone makes something from two different GPL's or from two totally different licenses? You don't have to remove a copyright notice to commit copyright infringement. If you use a copyrighted work without permission, you're probably committing copyright infringement. As the RepRap project is itself under the GPL, it stands to reason anything on that website is too. The two reprap blogs (blog.reprap.org and builders.reprap.org) are on a subdomain and apparently also hosted from Blogger.com. I don't see anywhere on the blog.reprap.org or builders.reprap.org sites that says in order to publish something on those blogs your work must be donated into the GPL.

from General by Forrest Higgs

I am getting so sick of hearing this kind of crap. Reprap is an open source technology project. There are a number of blogs, mine included, directly relating to the Reprap project. [3dreplicators.com] You will notice on my website that NOTHING is copyrighted. You can take any photo, any piece of text content, any code ... anything ... off of it and use it. About the only proviso that I'd attach is that I'd appreciate, not demand but appreciate being credited as the source of what was used. If you have copyrighted text or other media you damned well ought to be clearly marking the items or, indeed, the whole damned site as copyrighted. This BULLSHIT about Reprappers having to make inquiries about unmarked media on Reprap and Reprap related sites before using is just that, viz, BULLSHIT and obstructive bullshit at that. It seems to me that those people who harbour desires to run off in a corner and copyright and patent stuff need to go do that and stop bothering us open source types who want to get on with the project. >

from General by Lee Freyberg

Forrest, the absence of a copyright symbol or licence on your site or it's pages does not mean they are not copyrighted. Far from it. In countries that are signatories to the Bern convention copyright is automatic in any original work that becomes fixed in a medium. All your pages are in fact copyright to you, and the lack of any licence would mean that anyone would be silly to copy your information without first obtaining your permission, as otherwise they would have no legal protection if you decided to come after them for breach of copyright. This is the whole purpose of the copyleft licence like the GPL and CC; to enable people and organisation to _easily_ put content into (the effective) public domain. Without them, or something like them, there is _no_ public domain for new works, only works whose life + 50-90 years have expired, or who have been orphaned. I would guess that a single notice for an entire domain, like reprap has, indicating a license is probably good enough (not a lawyer though, so don't quote me on it). So anything on repraps pages, and in it's repo's is fair game so long as you abide by the GPL. This is a good thing. For all the individual blogs, while the intent, like yours, might be to have them freely available in the public domain, without an explicit licence they are not, and are a risk for anyone that uses them until they are. As to the legality of someone selling reprap information (as mentioned, the personal blogs are a whole different kettle of fish), so long as the meet the terms of the GPL, they are entitled to do so, as the GPL does not prohibit sale of derived works. What they can't do is re-licence the reprap portions of their product, so whoever buys it is perfectly entitled to change it, give it away, sell derivatives of it, or any other act protected by the GPL. The GPL is a strong copyleft licence, it makes sure that reprap technology remains open, and I think it makes sense for reprap to use it. For your own blog entries you are perfectly free to use a more permissive licence like LGPL or CC-BY or whatever. The only issue I see with GPL is that it's fairly focused on software, I think it would have made more sense to find a copyleft hardware licence for the hardware bits, and used CC-BY-SA or similar for the textual blogs / sites. As lots of other projects have found out the hard way, changing a licence once a project is established is no easy thing to do.

from General by Lee Freyberg

Not resisted, so can't edit previous post, but here's the important bit about the Bern convention from wiki: Under the Berne Convention, copyrights for creative works do not have to be asserted or declared, as they are automatically in force at creation. In these countries, there is no requirement for an author to "register" or "apply for" a copyright, or to mark his or her works with a copyright symbol or other legend. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work, and to any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires. Emphasis added. [en.wikipedia.org]

from General by HanClinto

Well said, Lee -- that was very helpful information.

haloscope Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> As I understand the GPL, you can do basically
> anything you want with the thing under the
> license.

Yes, as long as they don't re-license it. As Lee said, if someone wants to package up and sell a DVD, he's free to do so, so long as he also gives away the sources, and that he can't complain when other people distribute derivative works for free (also exclusively under the GPL).

haloscope Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> To use your theory, if someone has a little GPL
> part in a much larger product, the entire product
> must be under the GPL.

That is correct. That is why GPL is called a "viral" license, and why so many people are moving away from it to more free licenses.

haloscope Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> But, what if someone makes
> something from two different GPL's

Generally, GPL allows it to be re-licensed under future licenses (so GPL 2.0 code could be included into a GPL 3.0 codebase, because 2.0 includes a provision to be "upgraded" to a future version of the license).

haloscope Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> or from two totally different licenses?

Then you cannot use the GPL code. Everything must be GPL, or none of it. That's the way it goes. It's ::EXACTLY:: for this viral provision of the GPL that Wikipedia is currently undergoing a vote to (painfully) try to move itself away from the GFDL (the documentation branch of the GPL) in favor of a more free license like CC-BY-SA. Historically for places like Wikipedia, the GFDL has been a huge barrier towards being able to integrate content from other non-GFDL'd wikis (such as ones that are Creative Commons) into Wikipedia -- as per the language of the GFDL, that is extremely forbidden. You can read more about the current struggles that Wikipedia is having with the GPL / GFDL here: [creativecommons.org]

haloscope Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> As the RepRap project is itself under the GPL, it
> stands to reason anything on that website is too.

It doesn't just stand to reason -- the license page of the RepRap project explicitly says so: [www.reprap.org] "...all computer programs computer files images data results documents..."

haloscope Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> I don't see anywhere on the blog.reprap.org or
> builders.reprap.org sites that says in order to
> publish something on those blogs your work must be
> donated into the GPL.

Perhaps not on those, but certainly on objects.reprap.org it says so any time you want to edit a page: "Please note that all contributions to RepRapWiki are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 (see RepRapWiki:Copyrights for details). If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here." I agree -- those other subdomains are unclear, but just from a cursory reading of the RepRap license, it seems fairly clear that Dr. Bowyer's intent was for everything about RepRap to be locked into the GPL.

Forrest Higgs Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> If you have copyrighted text or other media you
> damned well ought to be clearly marking the items or,
> indeed, the whole damned site as copyrighted.

Correct -- the whole site with all images, documents, files, results, etc, are copyrighted and released under the "strong copyleft" (viral) GPL. As Lee said, no explicit marking is necessary. This is why using images found on the net for commercial works (through places like Google Images) is a legal minefield -- it is the responsibility of anyone who wants to use something found somewhere else to seek out the copyright owner of that work and obtain permission (whether through a publicly declared license usage or a special dispensation).

Forrest Higgs Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> This BULLSHIT about Reprappers having to make
> inquiries about unmarked media on Reprap and Reprap
> related sites before using is just that, viz,
> BULLSHIT and obstructive bullshit at that.

No inquiries necessary -- it's all GPL, and if you include it in your product (such as your blog, paper, video, or product), it must also be licensed under the GPL. Simple as that. I agree -- the GPL is a pain in the butt. I hate having to distribute the full text of the license (with however many pages it is with its idealistic diatribe in the beginning) with every single release that's ever made with it. It's a pain in the butt license that is very hard to comply with -- if you make a video that includes pictures from RepRap, then technically if you want to comply with the RepRap license, you must also include the full text of the GPL v1.2 in your video. It's a serious pain, and a serious licensing inconvenience to people who just want to use the project. Please don't shoot the messenger -- just trying to explain the legal licensing encumbrances that come along with using a viral "strong copyleft" license like the GPL. And this is why I'm a strong supporter of open source, but I don't like to use the GPL. --clint

from General by cptwinder

People can complain about others using content from the Reprap.org websites and/or loosely related blogs. We can sit and debate copyrights and licensing agreements until the end of time. But I see it like this; unless the content being used is yours, you have no room to complain. Whether or not someone has asked permission to reuse content on my site is between them and myself. If there was not an agreement, it is up to me to dispute its reuse. I'm in total agreement with Forest. It is B.S. that this keeps coming up. And in the long run, I don't see this DVD or eBook as a bad thing. It will only bring new people to the project. Granted, the people we would want helping with the development wouldn't buy the DVD anyway; because they will have googled reprap before purchasing.

from General by Lee Freyberg

Jeremy, no one is disputing that it's your right to licence your content as you see fit, unless it's derivative of reprap content in which case you must use the GPL. Nor is anyone arguing that reprap should not be freely available. All Clint and I have tried to do is point out that modern copyright is a legal minefield, it is not something that can be taken for granted regardless of peoples intent.

Without explicit copyleft licences it is foolish to use someone else content without permission, they might not come after you, but then again they might, and you would not have a leg to stand on. That's probably not an issue for a individual, but it's not good enough for any organisation, commercial or otherwise; they just can't take the risk.

Hence the need for clarity around the licencing. Also, who knows if information on your blog about your reprap build is a derivative of reprap content, it might be, or it might not be, and it would probably take a copyright lawyer to tell you. Far simpler to just whack the GPL on it, just to make it clear. It might be BS, but it's necessary BS under the current copyright regime. If you don't like it lobby for copyright to be reformed - it badly needs it. There's plenty of good information about why available for free - all Lessig's books are CC licenced, and a good place to start.

I also agree with Clint about the viral nature of the GPL; It's appealing for that very point, but in reality I think it does more harm than good. Yes a more permissive licence is going to allow commercial forks that don't contribute back into the public domain, but it also allows much wider adoption. Most of the companies I have worked for in the last few years consume a lot of open source software, but all of them are very wary of the GPL and generally won't touch it at a library level, though they are happy to use fully fledged products that use it. Personally I think that in the long run it's adoption that's important, the more you get, regardless of if it contributes back into the public domain, the stronger the project gets. On the other hand, early stage projects like reprap can benefit from the extra protection of the stronger copyleft license like the GPL. As to the morality of on-selling reprap info, if they are adding value, why should they not be able to charge for it, and the GPL explicitly allows for it. And if they are not, caveat emptor, and as they say any publicity is good publicity

from General by HanClinto

cptwinder Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> I'm in total agreement with Forest. It is B.S.
> that this keeps coming up.

It keeps coming up because the license was specifically chosen to prohibit closed-source documentation sorts of things, like this person is selling. There are plenty of other licenses that would have lined up more ideally with your or Forrest's ideals -- BSD, MIT, whatever. However, Dr. Bowyers specifically chose the GPL for all of RepRap's content, and these are the consequences of that decision.

cptwinder Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> And in the long run, I
> don't see this DVD or eBook as a bad thing. It
> will only bring new people to the project.

I agree with you. But sadly, it seems that Dr. Bowyers doesn't, and he structured the RepRap license specifically to discourage (and ideally eliminate) this sort of thing. If that's not what he meant to say when he picked the GPL, then we should migrate to a license more in line with the ideals of RepRap. Stallman and the rest of the GPL crew have been incredibly clear about exactly what they meant when they put down the legal language of the GPL. "Say what you mean, and mean what you say." It seems like RepRap should either work to abide by the GPL, or stop operating under the mere pretense of it. Otherwise, as you put it, this "B.S." will keep coming up, and this discontinuity will only get more pronounced as the project gains in popularity. We can handle it with a suture now, or major surgery later. Respectfully, clint

from General by Forrest Higgs

It would seem to me that all the energy being spent on this thread would be better devoted to getting your reprap machines operational.

from General by haloscope

Agreed. Now where the hell is my extruder...

from General by nophead

I completely fail to understand how anyone publishing something in a blog can retain copyright on it in any meaningful sense. The very act of blogging makes it freely available to anybody that wants it. It gets automatically copied from server to server, pushed out in RSS feeds, copied into caches and regurgitated by mashup robots into other blogs. If you don't want everybody in the world to have it for free then don't blog it. What difference would it make if somebody put my blog on a CD and sold it? Copying something that is everywhere anyway makes no sense. Downloading software and books on the other hand is a bit different. You don't get them until you have downloaded them, so strings can be attached, but blogs get pushed out to people without any conditions on viewing.

from General by Forrest Higgs

Only when you understand that copyright and patent laws were bought and paid for by large corporations and especially intellectual property corporations like Disney and others of that ilk and exist solely to protect the interests of such firms to the total exclusion of the rights and interests of anybody else do such laws make any kind of sense. The pity is that our legislatures are so utterly corrupt that they can be bought by anyone who has the money to pony up to enrich and keep them in office.

from General by haloscope

Just because you give something away for free doesn't mean you don't have a copyright in it. Look, I just wanted to let people know in case they were protective of their work. I should have realized that anyone working on the RR project would be happy to get their work out there in any way they could. I agree with Forrest - let's kill the thread and build robots.

Just so nobody will worry. I quite accidentally deleted the thread. I have poor fine motor control and hit the delete link when I was meaning to look at the thread just after it. There's no fell or secret intent going on, just simple clumsiness, something I have quite a reputation for.

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Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

Thanks for reformatting that thread, Lee -- well done!

Thanks for letting us know what happened, Forrest -- no worries, and I hope you'll forgive me if I over-reacted.

--clint

Clint: No forgiveness is in order. I was just embarrassed at my own clumsiness. I should have said something earlier.

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Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison