[Corpora-List] license question

[Andy Roberts]

On Mon, 21 Aug 2006, Emmanuel PROCHASSON wrote:

> The Non-derivatives part of the license is dangerous to me, as it means that 
> nobody would be able to contribute to your lexicon, and nobody could use it 
> in another free (as in freedom) project, since a part of the project cant be 
> derivate.
>
> The Non-commercial license is dangerous too, since you can't really see where 
> is the line between fair use and commercial use.
>
> Those licenses are not "free" (as in freedom) license to me.
>

I don't fully agree with your interpretation of 'non-derivative'

1. You can contribute - simply email your contributions to Paul et al!
You can't make spin-offs (forks) of the resource, however. Open
source/Free licenses have never given an automatic right to a
contributor to force contributions to the project owner/maintainer.

2. Free/open source projects can "use" non-derivative resources. They
can't redistributed under the same license as the project that uses it.
This typically means that it is distributed as a separate component.
It's a bit like saying an open source concordancer can't process the BNC
because it doesn't use an open licence!

I'm not a fan of 'non-derivative' clauses myself, and in the context of
lexical resources I think it's unnessary. THe non-commercial restriction
should be adequate in my opinion.

Regards,
Andy