OSDev.org

jerryleecooper wrote:We need two license, a license from the authors to the magazine, and a license from the magazine to the end-user, or one license fits all cases and everyone can make theirs own magazines with the material posted on the internet? YOu're better to make a license for editorial use, and a license for distribution.

Unless I'm mistaken, that would be legal hell. You'd really need an actual lawyer to draft something like that up, and that's not something we have.

I say if someone wants to copy our mag, let'm. It's only better publicity for us.

EDIT: Maybe add a clause to explicitly state modified or unmodified? (According to the below concern.) Isn't there a license that has something like this? Port?

hmm.. thats an idea to think about.

We need to be able to edit freely internally, but not allow the textual modifications from the end-user. If they were allowed to mess with the text being distributed, they could re-write basically whatever they want and pass it off as the origional writers work.

I have a solution, the authors get to have a final say on what gets to be published. The editors makes the corrections, grammatical, etc. They send back the edited copy to the authors, the authors revise them and if they don't agree, the article doesnt get to be published, or theres negotiation. After all the articles will get signed by the authors, there's reputation at stake, if for example I say that black holes will happen if processors shrinks too much, the edited article shouldnt comes out as "a singularity will happen at 4 nanometter".

In the beginning, I don't think that is going to be a big problem. We can always draft a better license later. My sister is a lawyer, but I don't want to bother her at the moment (she lives at the other end of the country). I don't know how much she knows about copyright either.

IMHO, two licenses would be a nightmare. Let people copy as they will. How many times has the Linux kernel forked?

I don't see where's the problem with 2 licenses. There would be one license targetted at the magazine, and the magazine would make its own more restrictive license targetted at the end-user. The end-user wouldn't know about the first license, and the editors and authors wouldn't need to mind the second license.

Yayyak wrote: IMHO, two licenses would be a nightmare. Let people copy as they will. How many times has the Linux kernel forked?

The entire kernel? I know for at least one instance, but of course is not popular as the original. but in the case of the linux kernel its more a matter of branching.

Forks don't live. It's a fundamental part of ESR's writing, and it's largely true.

I know of a few successful forks, but it's true most of them don't/can't survive.
When you fork, you're generally motivated by the desire of competition, because then why forking?
And when you do competition, you are under the law of natural selection.

Magazines in general are under the law of natural selection because they need to be competitive, attracting readership, etc.
Does System Call need to be competitive? Does it have to? If everyone can copy our article and make their own magazine, why would authors continue submiting their articles to System Call if some other magazine on operating system low level programming becomes more successfull?
Something to think about.

I see your point. How about we use the above FreeBSD-based license for Authors->Editors, and a simple "All rights reserved. Permission to reproduce in exact form permitted." for the wider world. And even if the licenses don't end up in that form, that should be the gist of them. Allow the editors to modify, but not the wider world. They can download, read, and send the PDF to friends.

beautiful.
I like that idea.

Yayyak wrote:I see your point. How about we use the above FreeBSD-based license for Authors->Editors, and a simple "All rights reserved. Permission to reproduce in exact form permitted." for the wider world. And even if the licenses don't end up in that form, that should be the gist of them. Allow the editors to modify, but not the wider world. They can download, read, and send the PDF to friends.

Two things:

• We need the author's permission to change an article's license. This would have to be included in the Authors->Editors license.
• We need a disclaimer for the mag. (Not a big deal.)

This hurts my head.

I'd be happy to do some writing for the magazine (I have a spare two hours every Monday in between lectures and tutorials at uni) - just PM me when you need my to write something.

Have we got a proper website for this (http://fakeworld.homeftp.org/magazine/ is not working). I'd be interested in building a website for this and writing articles.

currently we are resolving some issues running MONO on the linux server. the new area is www.system-call.org.

01000101 wrote:currently we are resolving some issues running MONO on the linux server. the new area is www.system-call.org.

I would recommend using PHP instead.