Guest Posted May 27, 2003 Posted May 27, 2003 To Harald and Dev. Team: I wanted to get some quick clarification on the Copyright of the Wiki project. Sorry if it seems this answer is already in the copyright, I just want to check straight up with you guys. We have multiple OSCommerce users on our server. In fact soon, all of our users will be OSCommerce users. However, there is a large number of them who don't know they are using OSCommerce, mainly because they just don't pay attention and don't know enough to look at the Copyrights, or they just don't care. We also try to avoid having to answer many many questions about "What or who is OSCommerce?" So we just call it the "Shopping Cart," It's easier from a support side to manage since many of our users are extreme novices. I am in charge of creating a content page to help our users that will include FAQ's, Help Manuals, Video Tutorials, etc. My question is, can I use Wiki Documentation text in any of my help materials for my clients? I hope this question makes sense. If not please let me know and I'll clarify. Thanks for all your efforts. Ben
Guest Posted May 27, 2003 Posted May 27, 2003 Ben, If you do not use the information for commercial interests like selling then you can use it .... Harald correct me if I'm wrong. The efforts produced here are only intended for the osCommerce project. No permission is granted to reproduce the text within this Wiki site that are for the benefit of other open source or commercial projects based on, or not based on, osCommerce. Permission to reproduce the text within this Wiki site is granted for the personal benefit of osCommerce store owners when no commercial interests exists (for example, permission is not granted for reproducing text which would appear commercially in sold books).
Guest Posted May 27, 2003 Posted May 27, 2003 Melinda, Thanks for the response. We sell hosting to our clients, but we won't be selling any of the information, this will definitely be a free resource for them to use. So unless otherwise stated by someone else I will take that as a green light for now. Thank you very much. By the way, since I'm using it I will definitely try to contribute to it as well. I don't know that I have any good stuff to throw in now but I'll try to find some. Documentation is utterly important. A lost art from long ago! Nice wookie btw :) Thanks again. Ben
JimmyCTseng Posted July 4, 2003 Posted July 4, 2003 Seems to be a fuzzy area :roll: If you provide a link to the original documents or a copy of it original document with a copyright notice or say the documents are from osCommerce Wiki documents, it seems to be in the "spirit" of the "conditions of usage". But I don't think you can modify the documents and call them "shopping cart" documents without violating the spirit of the "conditions". I call them "conditions" because it is not clear what the author(s) are asserting rights over. If osCommerce as an author or legal entity is trying to protect the intellectual property rights of osCommerce documents using copyrights, it should carry the copyright notice "© 2003 osCommerce" to be protected by copyright. I'm not sure if you can copyright Wiki documents from multiple authors unless there agree to release ownership to "osCommerce" as a legal entity. Jimmy
Draxx Posted July 16, 2003 Posted July 16, 2003 I would think that you COULD copyright the combined works of several other authors provided: 1. The work you have included is unmodified. 2. The origional author is sited for their work. 3. The whole content of your work is not derrived from a single source. 4. The purpose of the content is to educate or review. This would be a compliation copyright and quite legal. Even though the owner of the compliation is not the author of the content. Of course I'm not an attorney so I could be wrong.
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