favor

[Loren M. Lang]

On Tue, Feb 08, 2005 at 11:06:13PM -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Loren M. Lang
> > Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 9:33 PM
> > To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> > Subject: Re: favor
> >
> >
> > What if I wanted to put up a page of emails that I wrote and sent to,
> > say, the freebsd questions mailing list.  Since they are
> > replies to other
> > peoples emails, it includes bits of what they wrote, but it may be
> > relavent to understanding my reply.  Now, of course I'll remove all
> > headers and mangle all email addresses, but, since it includes their
> > ideas, can I still post it on a website for others to read who may be
> > having the same problems?
> >
> 
> This is called making a collection, and strictly you are supposed to
> get permission from each person to include what they say.
> 
> However, in this case, it is most likely each person is just repeating
> to your answer some response they heard from someone else, or got from
> a manual, or some such.  For example you post asking for an example of
> a /etc/printcap and someone replies - while technically that's his
> copyrighted material, if he simply copies an example already in the
> /etc/printcap file with a few explanations, it's not his copyrighted
> material since it belongs to the BSD copyight - except that the
> BSD copyright allows you to do this....

Actually, I was referring more to the idea of posting my responces to
other people questions.  For instance, I recently posted several
responces for the thread about xhost and x authentication explaining in
detail how x auth works.  Now if questions come up again here or
elsewhere, I don't want to have to repost everything I wrote, just refer
to a url.  Some of it I do plan to rewrite, but I haven't had time to
rewrite all the emails I think would be useful to post.  Since there
usually available in some form in an archive, I thought it would be
convient to just archive them on my site as well.  All the emails are
ones that I've sent, but include quoted text from the original email.

> 
> It is far better to simply rewrite the responses that you get, besides
> making them more cohesive and easier to understand, when you do this
> you avoid the copyright issue.  Ideas cannot be copyrighted -
> for example I can see a SpongeBob Squarepants cartoon where the
> Sponge gets flushed and jams the crapper - I can then write a story about
> a talking toilet brush that gets flushed and jams the crapper - no
> infringement there.  That is after all how 99% of television writing is
> done today.  Ideas can be patented though and images can be trademarked.
> So I best make sure the toilet brush in my story doesen't look yellow,
> spongey and square.
> 
> Ted

-- 
I sense much NT in you.
NT leads to Bluescreen.
Bluescreen leads to downtime.
Downtime leads to suffering.
NT is the path to the darkside.
Powerful Unix is.

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