vp:Licenses
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Revision as of 12:07, 4 December 2010
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Licenses
The papers submitted under the terms of the Call for Papers must fulfill a number of requirements. One of these is that the author must grant use rights under a free licence. Because LinuxTag is a free information platform, and also respects the individual needs of the contributors, you can choose from a number of different licences. All of the acceptable licenses fulfill the following conditions:
LinuxTag must have the right to publish the presentations held at the conference in print and on the LinuxTag CD or DVD in electronically form (PDF, HTML, or plain text). LinuxTag only requires a simple use right, not an exclusive right.
LinuxTag aims to promote the free exchange of information by ensuring that anyone can reproduce and distribute the published works. The documents submitted for the LinuxTag event deal with widely varying areas. At the same time, the authors have widely varying notions of what the public should be allowed to do with their work. For this reason LinuxTag this year has decided to offer authors a choice of different licences under which to publish their documents. The individual licenses are briefly described below. Note that several licenses can be granted simultaneously. Authors may choose from the following licences:
Creative Commons Licence
Another licence to permit anyone to use content without the right to modify it is the Creative Commons "No Derivs 1.0" license. Again, this licence does not create true Open Content. It allows the user to reproduce and distribute the work without modification in all media. The licence is in English and adapted to US law. For this reason it is less suited to govern the distribution of content that is primarily aimed at German-speaking users.
- Summary
- Suitable licence for international distribution without modification.
- View the licence
- Creative Commons by-nc-nd 3.0 Licence
GNU Free Documentation Licence
The GNU FDL is a copyleft licence: that is, it allows users to modify the work. The special feature of the GNU FDL is that, under certain conditions, parts of the work can be defined as "invariant sections", and excluded from the right of modification. For this reason the distributed work must be accompanied by certain documentation which includes information about this stipulation. As noted in its preamble, the GNU FDL offers special advantages for the distribution of software documentation or the creation of instructional or reference documents. It includes suitable stipulations regarding attribution to the author of the parent version, etc. It is less suitable for academic and political documents, since it offers less protection against infringement of the author's interest in a true representation of subjective views.
- Summary
- A licence that is well suited for international use, but with advantages especially in the field of documentation and technical or scientific texts and presentations.
- View the license
- GNU Free Documentation Licence (International)
GNU General Public License
The GNU GPL is a software licence that addresses specific issues involved in software distribution and development. Its suitability for documents is limited, since certain other issues arise in this area. However, the GNU GPL is a copyleft licence, and in past years many LinuxTag participants have expressed the wish to release their documents under this licence. For this reason we are including it among the options. However, in your own interest you should consider whether one of the other licences is better suited to encourage the distribution of your work.
- Summary
- The classic software licence, less suitable for other content.
- View the license
- GPL 3.0
Deprecated licenses
CeC Licence (unmodified content)
Works published under this license may be reproduced, distributed and made available for downloading. Modification of the work is not permitted. Thus works distributed under this license are not Open Content in the strictest sense. The use of this license ensures that the author and copyright holder of the work are always named. The licensee is also obligated to deliver a copy of the license when distributing the work so that third parties are also informed of their legal rights. The license has been subjected to a legal examination and offers a very firm legal foundation especially for distribution in the German-speaking countries. Thus if the content is not intended for international distribution (as for example documents or presentations in German), this license is the safest.
- Summary
- The license for the distribution of German-language content without the right of modification by the user.
CeC Free Content Licence
This is a free licence that declares the work as true Open Content. Under this licence, texts, databases, computer programs and other works can be used by anyone. Anyone has the right to reproduce, to distribute, and to modify the work. The licence includes a "copyleft" clause: Anyone who creates a modified version of the work must likewise release it as Open Content. The advantage for the owner of the rights to the original work is that a kind of exchange ring with other persons is created without requiring an organizational link.
- Summary
- The licence for the distribution of German-language works as Open Content.
Legal matters
We are grateful to the Institut für Rechtsfragen der Freien und Open-Source Software, and to Carsten Schulz and Dr. Axel Metzger in particular, for their assistance in selecting these licenses.
