[Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale
Michael R. Irwin
michael_irwin at verizon.net
Wed Jul 5 03:40:15 UTC 2006
Brad Patrick wrote in part:
>Licensing others to publish, from
>the WMF perspective is not a big step, and is to WMF's great financial
>advantage.
>
snip
>Robert, what would an efficient process look like to you, assuming the
>licensing component is a requirement?
>_______________________________________________
>
>
This is a poor set of assumptions and I think gives a contrary
impression to what is intended.
The FDL is specifically designed to allow anyone to modify the material
and republish it in any form that meets the attribution requirements and
the requirement that the FDL propagate to the recipient. It
specifically prohibits publishing in a form that does not include an
FDL for the recipient to republish the "free" content at will.
This would seem to require that the content be kept separate from the
Logos and Trademarks. Essentially we could sell the right to use the
logo and trademark in advertising and promotion efforts but not for
packaging with the FDL material unless the Trademark and Logo were also
released under the FDL.
Assuming the content must be licensed from the WMF is a violation of the
FDL and it could be argued an attempt to exploit the name brand
recognition of the GNU FDL without meeting the responsibilities of its use.
It seems pretty easy to me to delineate that the trademarks and logos of
the WMF may be licensed separately for use in advertising and sales
promotion to any publishing effort using the FDL'ed material in ways
mutually acceptable to the WMF and the publisher. Any customer who
purchased the content could in turn modify the content and the
attributions appropriately and then republish without the use of the WMF
trademarks or logos.
Clearly any licensing arrangement for the trademarks or logos should
include a right to review and cancel the use of the trademarks and logos
in inappropriate fashions.
regards,
lazyquasar
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