Re: [Plone-docs] Taking down documentation/manual/developer-manual ?

[Steve M. <st...@dc...>]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Mikko Ohtamaa <
mik...@re...> wrote:

> ...
> Of course this would involve some politics as I believe official developer
> manual is copyrighted by the foundation, but collective docs are by
> individual contributors.
> ...
>

Unfortunately, the PF has no copyright agreement for any of the
documentation space. It had been the intention to do that, but I don't
think the developer agreement was ever amended to include documentation.
So, copying anything from the documentation area anywhere without
permission of the original authors would be problematic. I suspect the only
documentation that's probably got a clear license is that included with
packages contributed under the developers' agreement.

Note that this is probably a very similar situation to collective docs.
Since there's no contributor's agreement, everything in it probably needs
to be considered the copyrighted property of the individual authors and
everyone else who ever made a substantive change. Copyright law sucks. Lack
of clear license unfortunately does not mean something is free for the
taking. It means the opposite: it's hopelessly encumbered and can't be
reused by anyone.

Sorry to be a late contributor to the discussion!