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LeeCampbell / IntroToRx

Content and build for "Introduction to Rx" digital book
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Is the license file missing? #25

Open daixtrose opened 9 years ago

daixtrose commented 9 years ago

I could not find a license file. Could you please provide one on the top level? I am asking because I am trying to document some portions of RxCpp and could probably "steal" from your didactic setup for the C# version.

LeeCampbell commented 9 years ago

Ahhh.....let me speak to my lawyer. I am not strong in this area. While I am happy to share the content (so the greater community can all benefit), I worked long and hard to create it so would prefer it to stay on the site/book and be linked to.

daixtrose commented 9 years ago

IMHO we are a little bit in trouble if the license stays closed source: every documentation of ported versions of Rx (e.g. of RxCpp) will have quite a few portions of your book repeated in one way or the other. It makes perfect sense to follow your didactic setup. If there is no license this means that every other Rx documentation might run into copyright infringements - even if the authors do not look into your book: observer, observable, subject exist in all languages.

I'd prefer some way where your work is kept honored, but people are free to contribute - in any programming language version of the book available.

My proposal: For every major programming language (C++, JScript, JAVA) that has an Rx implementation you open a repository (e.g. IntroToRxCpp), give it a similar structure to the one you have for the C# version and let contributors like me add the translated (and probably modified/extended) content. By this measure the new books all read "Introduction To Rx" by Lee Campbell et. al.

For me it is fair enough if the books are published under your name and you request donations also for IntroToRxCpp, since you ignited the C# book and helped us a lot already.

LeeCampbell commented 9 years ago

As it is a book, I would expect the same respect that I tried to pay to the books I referenced. My issue is with wholesale copying instead of linking, quoting or acknowledging where the content originally came from. I dont want to make a fuss, but I just dont know the standard licences well enough to select the correct one.

LeeCampbell commented 9 years ago

Just in case it is not clear, I have no affiliation to Microsoft, except that I use their products. I am not on the Rx team either. However I try to keep in touch with them via GitHub/Twitter etc

daixtrose commented 9 years ago

I fear you probably misunderstood my intention. Actually my aim was and is to not only give you maximum credit for your work, but to ensure that the danger of a copyright infringement in other works is minimized by simply not even trying to set up another documentation for Rx* outside this repository.

An alternative of course is to set up a documentation for RxCpp and to hope that all similarities to your work are simply coincidental and not strong enough to sue the author.

What happens if I describe subject for RxCpp? The concept is the very same for all programming languages. What if I find my own words for describing that concept? Will they really be so different to what you have written? How should I deal with any similarities?

Generally speaking we are at the dawn of a problem described 1995. Also we are always in trouble if the software is OSI-approved OpenSource, but the documentation is not.

Again my proposal IOW: You have the opportunity to create IntroToRxCpp, let me contribute the C++ specific parts over time and simply mention me in the preface when done.

Please share your thoughts about this.

daixtrose commented 9 years ago

@LeeCampbell I added you to https://github.com/daixtrose/RxCpp so that you can survey any copyright issues

LeeCampbell commented 9 years ago

Sorry I have been slack at responding. I am currently on 4 week vacation with the family. Another option is to consider the ReactiveX Subject doco and we could focus our attention there. Any direct copies of the content from IntroToRx can then just be attributed. This way all good doco on Rx lives together and only language specific stuff needs to be in the subsection.