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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Office Suite for my new BSD Operating System
From:       Matthew Woehlke <mw_triad () users ! sourceforge ! net>
Date:       2008-08-13 18:49:24
Message-ID: g7vabl$61m$1 () ger ! gmane ! org
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Jaroslaw Staniek wrote:
> Matthew Woehlke said the following, On 2008-08-12 22:26:
>> Well... if you want your business letter to be useful as a document 
>> template, you must give me fairly broad permission to do whatever I like 
>> with "letter.dot" and derived works.
> 
> No. Yanike mentioned he plans to make templates (using his or other hands) and 
> provide them for selected audience. The same case applies for other types of 
> documents (as I still claim we're talking about documents and nothing more; 
> 'templates' term is technical distincion becouse of control flow that 
> applications depend on).

Ok, let's assume Yanike wants to ensure that only a selected audience 
can use certain templates. (Re-reading the original post, I'm not sure 
that's the case, vs. something that I assumed due to apparently reading 
too much RMS ;-). But that's for elsewhere in the thread, and already 
posted.) How would this be accomplished? If the template licensing 
allows me to choose arbitrary licensing terms for my own documents, 
which are /derived works/, then I can publish a document as e.g. GFDL/CC 
or even Public Domain. Someone else can then take the document, remove 
the non-template bits, and republish the template under similar terms 
(thus "releasing it to a larger audience"). Therefore, we must assume 
that the licensing on the template imposes licensing restrictions on any 
document made using that template. IOW, I cannot use the template 
without giving up rights.

Is it legal? Well, probably*. Is it ethical? I don't think so. Do you?

(* I'll decline to state my own opinion, as I don't feel I have the 
extensive knowledge of law that would be needed to offer one. However, I 
believe that it would be considered permissible according to current 
legal interpretations and would be upheld in court. I also suspect you 
could find someone who will argue that it is /not/ legal, and I'm fairly 
confident what hard-core Free Software advocates - i.e. the sort of 
people that believe proprietary software should be made illegal - would 
say about the ethical question.)

-- 
Matthew
That said, if this is coming out of your posterior then you should 
consider your diet. -- Richard Moore, in response to Aaron Seigo's 
stated source of suggested enum values.

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