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Everyone -
First I want to offer the Steering Committee's apologies for the delay in moving
this issue forward. We've spent some time discussing the license and now we are
ready to present a proposed solution for comments and feedback.
After talking through the issues internally, with a couple individuals who have
experience in licenses, and with the Jessiman family, we've come to the
conclusion that a simple solution for the license is better than a drawn out and
complicated one.
To the end-user, the license parts are distributed under should be easy to
understand and have few restrictions. Several people have suggested using the
Creative Commons Attribution license, and we agree. We propose to use Creative
Commons' "Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0" for the end-user license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/
We also have come to agreement that its necessary to include a 'Contributor
Agreement' for authors submitting parts to the library. This agreement will
spell out the non-exclusive right an author grants to LDraw.org to distribute
parts under the chosen license, as well the process for changing the license
parts are distributed under if necessary. This will give the authors a say in
how their work is distributed in the future and protect the users' time
investment building models using the parts. The Contributor Agreement will also
ensure the organization/community is never again in a position like we are
today, where we have to seek explicit permission from every single author to
distribute their parts under this license.
Along with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license above, we are
presenting a rough draft of the Contributor Agreement for discussion. It needs
polishing, which is what we hope this discussion will bring. The draft is at the
bottom of this message.
Feedback, comments, and edits are welcome.
The LDraw.org Steering Committee
Kevin Clague
Tim Courtney
Chris Dee
Larry Pieniazek
Orion Pobursky
--
***DRAFT*** Contributor Agreement ***DRAFT***
Bu submitting parts to the Parts Tracker, the part author (from here forward the
"Author,") agrees to the following terms.
The author retains all rights to the parts submitted except for the right of
redistribution. By submitting parts to the LDraw.org Parts Library by way of the
Parts Tracker mechanism, the Author agrees to grant LDraw.org the non-exclusive
right to distribute said parts in perpetuity, to the public, under the Creative
Commons Attribution License.
If in the future, LDraw.org leadership deems it necessary to change the license
the Parts Library is distributed under, the Author agrees to the following
process for securing permission to make the change.
A majority of authors approving the change is required for the change to be
enacted.
Authors will be contacted and asked to respond to the request using any of the
four available responses:
- Approval.
- Rejection.
- Abstain.
- No response.
All reasonable attempts to contact the author will be deemed made when there are
public announcements posted on LDraw.org and LUGNET (where LUGNET is the primary
location of LDraw.org-related public discussion), and an email message is sent
to the author using the address on record.
After sixty (60) days, if no response is received from the author, it will count
as an abstaining vote.
An abstaining vote indicates that the author will authorize his/her submissions
under the new license terms. Abstaining votes will not count towards the total
for which a majority will be measured. The majority will be calculated after the
60 day period has expired. A majority will be deemed reached if the number of
approval votes is greater than the number of rejection votes.
Authors may pre-approve LDraw.org to make license changes through a checkbox at
the bottom of this agreement.
The above provision serves as an assurance to the user that parts will not
disappear from the library in the future unless there are technical reasons to
do so, protecting their investment of time spent creating and sharing virtual
models using the parts.
By submitting parts to the Parts Tracker, the Author grants permission to other
authors to modify their work and resubmit the revised work to the library.
LDraw.org members may create derivative works of submitted parts, using in whole
or in part the code from the submitted parts for the purposes of creating
additional parts to submit to the library.
LDraw.org is under no obligation to distribute the library, and may suspend
distribution for any length of time as it sees fit.
[ ] By selecting this checkbox and using the submit button below, I hereby grant
LDraw.org permission to change the license my parts are distributed under at any
time in the future as it sees fit. If I do not check this box, I understand if
the issue of changing the license ever arises, LDraw.org will contact me and
seek my permission to make the change. At that point, I understand and agree
that if I do not respond within sixty (60) days of the request, I grant
LDraw.org permission to change the license my parts are distributed under.
[Submit]
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Message has 8 Replies:
 | | Re: Moving the License Forward
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| (...) (URL) I can see no difference in the human readable summary, it's likely the differences are in the legal version. This seems a good an open license. (...) Could your explain your thinking behind why you believe this second license is (...) (20 years ago, 12-Jul-04, to lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw)
| | | Re: Moving the License Forward
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| (...) I would hope that any changes made to a part file would include attribution to the original author(s). Perhaps this should be spelled out in the license? Other than this one little issue, I like what I see. Putting these two licenses into (...) (20 years ago, 12-Jul-04, to lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw)
| | | Re: Moving the License Forward
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| (...) Skip the above. The C.A. can't take away any rights of the author, and shouldn't. Several people maintain webpages of 'their' parts, and they should be able to do so. If people want to distribute their own parts, more power to them (...) (...) (20 years ago, 12-Jul-04, to lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw)
| | | Re: Moving the License Forward
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| (...) I am uncomfortable with the specific phrasing and reference to the Parts Tracker. Consider the situation[1] where author Alpha creates a part and publishes it on the Web. Author Beta then contacts Alpha and asks that it be submitted to the (...) (20 years ago, 13-Jul-04, to lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw)
| | | Re: Moving the License Forward
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| (...) No reponse isn't a response ;) but you cover it below in how they become abstentions. (...) I'm not sure I agree with a simple majority has enough weight behind it given the importance of the outcome of the vote. Imagine this outcome Abstains (...) (20 years ago, 13-Jul-04, to lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw)
| | | Re: Moving the License Forward
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| (...) there is no way in getting me to agree to this clause if this also impleis that others may modify my work before it got certified. to make it clearer: no fixes to parts I submitted for the first time. (...) once if got official they might do (...) (20 years ago, 14-Jul-04, to lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw)
| | | Contributer Agreement v2
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| Here's the CA v2. If you have criticism, please also offer a proposed solution. Summary of changes: - Added a 33% majority for passage instead of a simple majority - A general reordering and rewording of the entire document. The LDraw.org Steering (...) (20 years ago, 15-Jul-04, to lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | License Intent
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| Vision As promised previously, the Steering Committee would like to share our thoughts on licensing goals. We think it's important that any license, copyright, trademark, trade dress or other legal construction be done in the spirit of the overall (...) (20 years ago, 25-May-04, to lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw, FTX) !
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