Re: [Groff] UTP Copyright Status

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi,

I've been away and am trying to catch up on my email back-log so
apologies if I'm addressing things out of order.

> While working on a revised header, I got to wondering what the actual
> copyright status of the book is.  If I understand correctly, the
> original book in its pbm or pdf form is now under the O'Reilly open
> books project.  However, searching the O'Reilly web site discloses no
> information on the copyright status.

I believe O'Reilly & Assoc. hold the copyright.

> Some of the books listed in the open books project have a note at the
> bottom of the web page stating that the book was released under the
> GPL, but Unix Text Processing doesn't.

And isn't AIUI.

> Now for the kicker.  What kind of copyright is this re-creation under?
> I remember Werner sending a snippet of an email he had from Tim
> O'Reilly giving his okay to redo the book, but where does that place
> the re-creation?  Do we GPL it or what?

I don't know if you're thinking of this email *I* got from Tim.  I think
Werner also had contact with him earlier than that.

    From:    "Tim O'Reilly" <address@hidden>
    Subject: Re: Your Unix Text Processing Book.
    To:      Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden>
    cc:      <address@hidden>, "Tim O'Reilly" <address@hidden>
    Date:    Fri, 31 May 2002 08:19:38 -0700

    All of what you suggest would be terrific, and welcomed.  Consider
    permission already granted on adding details on groff extensions, as
    long as they are clearly flagged as additions to the original text
    (could be in release notes or some other kind of comments; doesn't
    have to be inline at each occurrence!)

    I feel really bad about losing the source.  I *may* have an old 5
    1/4 floppy with it, but if I do, I no longer have the machine to
    read it.  (Convergent technologies miniframe.)

    On 5/31/02 4:46 AM, "Ralph Corderoy" <address@hidden> wrote:
    [snipped]

    -- 
    Tim O'Reilly @ O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
    1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472
    1-707-829-0515 http://www.oreilly.com, http://tim.oreilly.com

I'd suggest going back to Tim and seeing what ideas he has, especially
since he keeps up to date with the various book licences.  I'd be
willing to do this if no one has a better idea.

It may be that we each retain the copyright of the bits we add WRT groff
and we have an `acknowledgments' list of scribes from the pbm files and
copyright holders over parts of the document.

For the moment, we do nothing, i.e. its kept largely amongst ourselves I
guess.  The worst thing we could do is have to go to ORA and seek
forgiveness later IMO, since we only need to do that if they're unlikely
to grant permission up front  :-)

Cheers,


Ralph.