Tim Churches wrote:
>Would it be possible to license the material, with the exception of the
>validator software and the lex/yacc files under a formal open source
>documentation license, such as The GNU Free Documentation license - see
>http://www.fsf.org/licenses/licenses.html#FDL - or one of the Creative
>Commons licenses - see http://creativecommons.org/license/ and place a
>message in each document pointing to the chosen license. Doing this
>provides better protection for everyone - both authors and users - than
>the above note in a README file.
>
>
The licencing that I think will occur will be as follows:
ADL language definition document + language production rules (a bit more
precisely produced than the ones I have included in this package) -
copyright to openEHR. The conditions of use are included below (and are
very open as you can see). This copyright description was developed by
the legal group of University College London; hopefully it is acceptable
to all prospective users.
It is much better to be as explicit and repetitive as possible (i.e. put
your licensing arrangements or clear references to or summaries of them
everywhere you can, including as headers in every file.
The software will probably remain copyright to Ocean. The licence will
most likely be the current openEHR licence devised in Australia, but
legal people will still need to check this. That licence is a Mozilla
clone (whcih guarantees it is automatically accepted as a valid OS
licence). There was some discussion about considering a modified GPL as
well - I have to admit I am not quite up to date on this. I have also
realised that the openEHR licence is not on the website. So - there are
a few details which we need to clarify. There is still a discussion
going on abotu dual-licencing as well.
Yes, the Mozilla license allows proprietary system vendors to write
wrappers with their own API around your code, without having to release
the wrapper (and hence their internal APIs). Of course, any changes to
your code they must release (if they plan on distribution to third
parties, that is). However, the Mozilla license is suposedly
incompatible with the GPL - the solution is to allow dual licensing,
with the GPL as the alternative license. people wanting to combine
openEHR code with other GPLed code can chose the GPL license, whereas
others (e.g. commercial vendors wishing to write interfaces to openEHR
code) will probably chose the Mozilla license. And of course openEHR can
still enter into separate commercial licensing agreements with
commercial vendors for the code (which openEHR has written, but not
code contributed under the Mozilla or GPL licenses unless the authors of
the contributions agree to such commercial licensing, or unless they
sign over their copyright to openEHR - you need to be explicit about
this when accepting contributed code into the main openEHR codebase).
Essnetially, everything will be as open as possible, with strong
copyright protection (this is to protect the openEHR community from
corporate or other appropriation & msuse of materials).
No complaints there. Use copyright to the maximum extent possible.
I realise that I forgot to include the link to the current licence at
openEHR (see URL in copyright statement below) - this is the full
wording of the licence for documentation - it will be included next
version. The software won't be released for a while simply because we
need enough time to clean it up, document it well enough that when it is
released, we do not drown in a barrage of email about "how does
work/what does htis mean" etc. However, I don't mind releasing it to
interested individuals who promise not to flood us too much! Just a
matter of resources, as I'm sure everyone can understand.
A few more comments below.
Hope this helps. There will be a number of announcements in the next few
weeks, which will clear up various things, includiing licence details.
- thomas beale
-----------------------
© Copyright /open/EHR Foundation 2001 - 2003
All Rights Reserved
1. This document is protected by copyright and/or database right
throughout the world and is owned by the /open/EHR Foundation.
2. You may read and print the document for private, non-commercial
use.
I think that is already problematic. You are saying that "commercial"
people/entities cannot even read the document? presumably they will be
able to buy identical copies which they can read?
Also, what is "private, non-commercial use" - the comma implies a
logical AND in legal terms, I understand. If I am employed in a
publicly-funded organisation (which would presumably be "public,
non-commercial use"), I can't read the document? Huh?
However the biggest problem is the attempt to distinguish between
"commercial" and "private"/"non-commercial". My understanding from those
with experience in such matters is that such distinctions are fraught
with difficulties and future court cases. The distinction between
academe and business is totally blurred in the US, and increasingly so
in other countries. In some US universities, they even get the best and
brightest undergraduates to work on commercial R&D projects! I won't go
on, but almost every time you examine instances of the
commercial/non-commercial distinction you become mired in if, buts and
grey areas. My advice is don't go there. Much better to let all god's
children read your documents - again, I refer you to the various
Creative Commons licenses.
3. You may use this document (in whole or in part) for the purposes
of making presentations and education, so long as such purposes are
non-commercial and are designed to comment on, further the goals of, or
inform third parties about, /open/EHR.
So can the documents be presented for discussion by a third party at a
commercially-organised, for-profit health informatics conference in
which speakers are paid fees?
4. You must not alter, modify, add to or delete anything from the
document you use (except as is permitted in paragraphs 2 and 3 above).
5. You shall, in any use of this document, include an
acknowledgement in the form:
"© Copyright /open/EHR Foundation 2001-2003. All rights reserved.
www.openEHR.org"
No problems with any of these.
6. This document is being provided as a service to the academic
community and on a non-commercial basis. Accordingly, to the fullest
extent permitted under applicable law, the /open/EHR Foundation accepts
no liability and offers no warranties in relation to the materials and
documentation and their content.
The "Accordingly" is unnecessary - the second assertion is not a legal
consequence of the first.
7. If you wish to commercialise, license, sell, distribute, use or
otherwise copy the materials and documents on this site other than as
provided for in paragraphs 1 to 6 above, you must comply with the terms
and conditions of the /open/EHR Free Commercial Use Licence, or enter
into a separate written agreement with /open/EHR Foundation covering
such activities. The terms and conditions of the /open/EHR Free
Commercial Use Licence can be found at
http://www.openehr.org/free_commercial_use.htm
No problems with the thrust of this, only with the attempt at
commercial/non-commercial distinction - you are setting yourselves up to
fail in that endeavour. Better to have one set of rules for everyone. I
won't comment in detail on the free commercial license - the intent is
fine, but the wording seems problematic to my legally-lay eyes.
Licensing of openEHR intellectual property is entirely your perogative,
but it is always good practice in law as in medicine to seek a range of
learned opinions about critical matters. Thus, I urge you to seek
another legal opinion on your licensing arrangements. I know its a pain
but it ends up being very important. Can I recommend Mr Brendon Scott, a
Sydney-based lawyer who specialises in open source and other IT
licensing issues - he has a background in both law and maths/comp
science. His web site is at
http://members.optushome.com.au/brendanscott/