Re: Wiki Usage

[David Jones <drj@...>]

On 12 Oct 2006, at 04:11, David Burgess wrote:

> Hi Wiki Maintainers,
>
> I wish to use the Wiki tutorials in a commercial product.
>
> 1) Can I do this? Does a donation to the Wiki support costs help?

My understanding of copyright is that in general you cannot.

Copyright is created as soon as a work is penned and in most laws  
(eg, the UK) copyright can only be transferred by written agreement.   
That means if I write something and add it to the Wiki then what I  
wrote is still copyrighted by me.  This is true even though generally  
people don't generally put copyright claims on their contributions,  
and it's still true even though it's sometimes really hard to track  
who wrote what.

Licenses to use copyrighted works are different, they need no written  
agreement to be transferred or used.  When submitting something to  
the Wiki the author is clearly licensing their work to be used on the  
Wiki, whether this is explicit or implicit doesn't really seem to  
matter to me.  But just because there's a license to use the  
copyrighted work on the Wiki doesn't mean anyone can take what's on  
the Wiki and do what they want with it.  Distribution is an act  
restricted by copyright and requires a license in order to be lawful.

You'll need to obtain permission (a license) from everyone who  
contributed to the pages you want to use.

drj