Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 10:31:52 -0400 From: "Paul Koning" <Paul_Koning@Dell.com> Message-ID: <m1ab5rk4dj.fsf@equallogic.com> | Can we get an authoritative answer please? Personally I'd hate for the tzcode (or data) to have any kind of licence. The reason is that to have a licence, there has to be a licensor, someone (some legal person, or entity) who is granting the licence. Currently (unless either ado, or the NIH, wants to be that) there is nothing around to grant the licence - who do we really think "owns" this data - who can even say they're responsible for the compilation of publicly available data? This is all a co-operative effort, and if any licence were to be granted, it would have to be done by everyone who's ever contributed, individually - and that's just a nightmare to contemplate - and how in any case would we, or anyone, ever know it was complete - that we hadn't missed a single contributor? (And for what it is worth, some of the contributors over time - or at least one I know of anyway, are no longer alive to grant anything, it would have to be done by their estate(s).) People here have said that everything (created anyway) is copyright by someone - and there has to be a licence for anyone else to use it, and in a sense that might be right - but all of the legal authorities come from cases where someone is claiming ownership, and someone else has been trying to deny that (some results may go either way, but there's always a claim). I'd barely hesitate to assume that there's not a single case anywhere where the issue was that that an author was attempting to deny they held copyright on some material, and someone else was trying to force it upon them... That just doesn't happen - who would be bringing suit, and for what? That's what I'd like to see with this (and much other) data that we really want to be "public domain" - where that concept might, or might not exist - that is, we all simply refuse to claim ownership. Not as creator of the data, or as a compiler of the data set. But not being the owner of anything means that we also cannot (rationally) give out a licence for its use (or not a meaningful one anyway). I do however understand the needs, particularly of large (rich) corporations that need to do all they can to protect themselves from accidentally misusing copyright data, and becoming vulnerable to lawsuits because of that. A licence might seem to help them - but it doesn't (or shouldn't) really, as the mere existence of the licence doesn't mean its issuer had the right to do that - the organisation receiving it really still has to investigate, find who the real owner(s) are, and that the licence is genuine - barely any different than investigating to find that there's no determinable owner. What we might do instead however, is to make it clear to all contributors of tz code and data (ie: us) that by contributing, we are agreeing not to enforce any rights that we may have (whether we do or do not) against any person for any use of the tz code and data in any wy whatever. If we were to put a notice to that effect - that all contributors have so agreed, that should perhaps satisfy those people who need some kind of reassurance before using the data, without anyone ever needing to claim that they're the owner of all or any part of the tz collection. kre