[Foundation-l] What's appropriate attribution?

Mike Godwin mgodwin at wikimedia.org
Tue Oct 21 18:51:13 UTC 2008


Thomas Dalton writes:

> To be more precise, it's as if you showed up to a programming
> conference and said that to someone who had just dismissed OOP
> principles as unimportant.

When you say "to be more precise," can you say what you mean, precisely?

It doesn't seem "more precise" to imply that anyone has dismissed  
moral rights as unimportant.

A more careful reading -- yes, I know it is unreasonable to expect  
careful reading -- might lead to an understanding that the particular  
problem set relating to moral-rights jurisprudence is not terribly  
applicable in a context in which the free licenses in question strive  
for attribution (rather than attempting to dodge attribution or  
misattribute creative works).  Similarly, greater care might lead one  
not to make grand pronouncements either about the number or diversity  
of lawyers required to address the moral-rights issue (especially if  
one is not a lawyer and not an expert on the issue), or about the  
qualifications of a particular lawyer about whose background one may  
know next to nothing.

Just a suggestion. (And I encourage anyone who hears me making  
pronouncements about object-oriented programming to take me down a  
notch.)


--Mike







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