[TriLUG] IP Issues? WAS: essential Linux skills?

Aaron S. Joyner aaron at joyner.ws
Wed Aug 17 11:39:51 EDT 2005


Dhruv Gami wrote:

>
>> PS - If anyone has time to throw this knowledge into the wiki, please
>> do!  Shoot an email reminder when you've got it up there and I'll try to
>> pick a few sub-sections to write up details for.
>
>
> Just a thought... Aaron here explicitly gave permission for the
> content he wrote to be put up on the Wiki. This got me thinking... is
> it ok to pick up material from mailing list responses (with proper
> references) and use them anywhere ? Say, if i find a particularly
> interesting post, can i use it in my blog ? or add that to the Wiki ?

This is a bit of a sticky-wicket in Internet culture, and I suppose it's
always in the back of my mind, which is why I went out of the way to
give permission.  A classic example is the message board that's setup to
harvest good discussion, with the intent of the webmaster publishing it
all in a book for profit.  There have been numerous examples of this
over time, but it's generally accepted that if you're going to use
someone else's words, you better get permission if you're going to
profit, and even if you're not, you really should cite it properly (an
HTML link, and a footnote naming the author as accurately as possible is
ideal).  The other flip side is that unless you're the only central
repository of this conversation, people are likely to go elsewhere to
bypass your profit motives.  It's an interesting angle to the Internet
culture, that everyone is usually very suspicious of anyone who's in it
to make money (and often rightly so).

Aaron S. Joyner



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