[TOS] Textbook, upstream, ownership of marks

[Karsten Wade]

On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 05:33:02PM -0400, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:

> 1. Individual chapters are owned by their respective authors.

In the case of people working for Red Hat who were doing this work as
part of their @redhat.com jobs, it may actually be Red Hat who is the
copyright holder.  That's largely how I recall seeing it practiced.
Red Hat's lawyers will certainly have an opinion.  Mine?  I don't
care, since it is appropriately licensed to be freed forever.

> 2. The collective textbook -- most importantly, the title and its 
> trademark, and the right to decide what gets published under that mark -- 
> are owned by an entity that can protect and sustain that brand.  I propose 
> that this will be Red Hat, since Red Hat paid for the time of the majority 
> of the authors to write the first version of the textbook.

This is really a larger discussion about the Teaching Open Source
mark, right?

I'm happy to have Red Hat do that job, they are pretty good at it, in
my experience.

> 3. Because all of the chapters are individual works, they could all be 
> taken and remixed into another textbook without any permission.  Which 
> means that anybody would have the full right to fork the text -- i.e. 
> create a new text called "Fidelio College's Open Source Textbook", so long 
> as the original authors receive the appropriate attribution in the new 
> textbook.

I think I see the distinction.  Being largely individual works,
remixing and attributing is easier than if the work were all mixed up.
Theoretically, anyway, since some of us wrote bits all over that might
be copyrightable.  In practice, it is probably easier for a remixer to
just attribute all copyright holders, but one could e.g. remix the
book without the "Fixing the Code" chapter and drop Jeff Sheltren from
the attribution downstream.  Not sure if this point matters?

> 4. How we work "Teaching Open Source" as an organization into the 
> "ownership" of the text is a difficult problem, because TOS is not a 
> formalized legal organization, but a group of folks working together. 
> For that reason, I don't think it makes sense to have TOS as a copyright 
> holder, but it is important to give this group some recognition.  Is 
> hosting the textbook at TOS sufficient for that purpose?

Another note, Red Hat has used a consistent bit of text that I think
folks have largely been happy with:  "Copyright (c) YYYY Red Hat,
inc. and others."  The "and others" covers all other copyright
contributions, and source control identifies who did what.

As part of putting it's name on the work and stewarding the mark, Red
Hat is taking on some responsibility to respond to threats against the
copyright or the mark.  At the same time, it is appropriate to note
that others have copyright, which you can discern at the worst by
turning to Red Hat for details.  (Something like that.)

> Red Hat paid for a large chunk of the writing of this book, so this is our 
> attempt to ensure that we receive some brand recognition for it, while 
> still ensuring the freedom to fork that is required to make for a truly 
> open project.
>
> Does anyone -- most specifically, authors -- disagree with this position? 
> Because I'm going to be talking to Red Hat lawyers in the not-too-distant 
> future, and I want to make sure that we have consensus.  And if we don't 
> have consensus, I want to work through it before I commit to sitting down 
> in front of lawyers, who don't like wasting time on people who don't have 
> their stuff together.  :)

I think that's fair, as an author, but I'm also clearly biased.
Regardless, I think the license provides the sufficient freedoms.

- Karsten
-- 
name:  Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
team:                Red Hat Community Architecture 
uri:               http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki
gpg:                                       AD0E0C41
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