: I just went and read the disclaimer there (hadn't done so before), and while
: it's definitely not clear legal wording it appears to say more or less
: "this information is copyrighted by someone [unspecified], and it's
: illegal to use it without their permission". That's just a legal
: truth; this post is copyrighted by me and it's illegal to use it without
: my permission, your post is copyrighted by you and it's illegal to use it
: without your permission, etc. Now I don't give a damn if anyone copies my
: posts and you probably don't either, so people are free to do so all they
: want. If you post something to Traxus, it's no different: you own the
: copyright on it (automatically, by law), and Traxus' disclaimer pretty
: much say "BTW, beware of copyright laws" to other people who
: might copy it without your permission. But if they have your permission to
: copy it, they're free to do so. Your stuff can't get locked up in Traxus;
: the disclaimer just warns that you may not be permitted to copy other
: stuff from the site. It's not really a license at all, just a legal
: disclaimer, saying "hey, there are laws, please don't break them,
: we're not responsible for anything". In the absence of a license,
: copyright automatically belongs to the original author, i.e. you.
: That said, I think Traxus could use clearer wording as to their copyright
: policy.
: Most Bungie.org sites have (or at least used to have) a disclaimer along the
: lines of "by submitting stuff here you give us the perpetual right to
: do whatever we want with it, but you can still do whatever you want to do
: with your stuff too". This was implemented because, back when I was
: running Myth@Bungie.org , one of my former co-maintainers decided he
: wanted to start up another site, and insisted that we remove all of his
: contributions from our site, which were extensive and mixed in with
: everyone else's contribution, so that our site would not be competing with
: his. We said we didn't claim ownership of any of his contributions and he
: was free to start another site and use what he had written for us, but
: that he *had* created most of that content originally for use on our site,
: so permission to use it seems pretty implicit. I mean, imagine if I
: insisted that all my posts to this forum here be removed... by posting
: them here I'm obviously consenting for them to be here. But he continued
: to press the issue so we rewrote all his stuff and added that disclaimer.
: I would think that something like that would be sufficient for Traxus.
: Personally I'm completely anti-copyright so I would put a "anything
: you contribute here you release to the public domain" clause, which
: would accomplish the same things as the B.org standard disclaimer and
: alleviate whatever concerns Guesty might have about his work being
: "locked up" in a "closed" project. But that's
: ultimately up to the maintainers of Traxus to decide. Either way, I think
: it needs to be clearer than it is now.
I am pretty much the sole maintainer of Traxus (there's another guy, but he basically doesn't exist on this corner of the Internet anymore, and I'm pretty sure I can speak for him anyway). I know I wrote that licensing page with the fattening thing, and I think it should have been obvious that we weren't taking a serious, legal tone when you read the word 'fattening'.
Now that we've established (again, always) that I wasn't being serious, I don't really have the expertise to draw up something that would satisfy everybody, even halfway. If people are both unsatisfied and care about the issue, maybe I could shirk responsibility and let the community come up with something (since someone you guys seem to have experience with this sort of thing) and just double-check it when it's done, or peripherally contribute to the process. Alternatively, if not enough people care then apparently people are comfortable contributing the way it is and thus I'm comfortable with ignoring it. Maybe not a smart decision, but I'm lazy and that has influenced the Traxus project more than anything else.
So, who wants to volunteer?
