FreeAlternatives: project proposal

Alex Hudson home at alexhudson.com
Thu Jan 4 12:31:47 UTC 2007


On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 12:14 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> "Stefano Spinucci" <virgo977virgo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think we shouldn't present *every* single alternative to proprietary programs,
> > but only a polished and well organized list of good free software programs.
> >
> > Couldn't be this part of the advocacy project ???
> 
> Actually, why not work on persuading FSF to release
> the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory http://directory.fsf.org/
> data under a free software licence (not FDL)?

If you want to do that, please don't use a software licence - they don't
cover the rights involved. 

In particular, in this part of the world at least, there is a database
right which applies, so the data will be covered by both copy right and
database right. Something like the GPL doesn't address the latter; it's
really the wrong tool for the job IMHO.

I guess it would be possible to add an extra license, along the lines
of:
                
                "This data may also be covered by database rights, the
                rights holders being <persons X, Y, Z> and the year of
                first publication being YYYY. The rights holders
                explicitly give permission freely for any activity
                controlled by these rights."

That ought to be sufficient to allow people to freely copy/extract from
the database without fear of further repercussion, but I would favour a
more generic license which doesn't address specific laws - that would be
more "portable" across the world, I think (since in other
WTO-but-not-EEA places, similar rights _are_ part of copyright, as I
understand it).

Without such a license, many uses will be restricted - in particular,
commercial use.

Cheers,

Alex.




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