[news.eclipse.technology.ecesis] Re: Copyright issue and other issues

["Mike Milinkovich" <mike.milinkovich@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> The question, of course, now comes as to "what is a change in the 
> material?"
> Changing the text or diagrams on an existing slide is clearly a change.
> Creating a new slide in another presentation, a new slide that clarifies 
> or
> explains a point in an ECESIS slide is clearly not a change.
> Is adding a new slide to an existing ECESIS presentation a change - that's 
> a
> question I am not qualified to answer, and thus I have cc'd this post to 
> the
> license@xxxxxxxxxxx email alias for the experts to answer.

The answer to this question is really best left to your own lawyers. What 
the question boils down to in legal terms is: "have I created a derivative 
work"? The determination of whether that is true has to be dealt with on a 
case-by-case basis. The Eclipse Foundation can help with clarifications, but 
we're not competent to give legal advice.

Consider the example above: adding one slide to an existing ECESIS 
presentation to create a new presentation. That new presentation would 
likely be a derivative work and the one new slide would have to be made 
available under the CPL/EPL. That doesn't mean you could not charge a fee to 
delivery the course. It just means that the incremental content would 
licenced under the CPL/EPL, and others would be free to incorporate it in 
their courses. Please note that the creator of the new slide would still own 
the copyright to it, and could put their name and copyright notice on the 
slide. You just have to make it available under the CPL/EPL.

If you changed the example to where a contributor created a new presentation 
of original content which referenced ECESIS content as a separate course 
(perhaps as a prerequisite), then that would likely not be a derivative 
work. There would be no requirement to make the materials available under 
CPL/EPL.

Hope this helps.

Mike Milinkovich
Executive Director,
Eclipse Foundation, Inc.