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Comment Copyrights Redux

By Noah | May 17, 2009

Early readers of this blog will remember that the original policy on comment copyrights caused some controversy.  You can read about that in the posting Copyrights and Comments and especially in the interesting comment thread that followed.  As promised, I took some time to think about it all, and to talk to some people whose opinions I respect.

The net is that I have decided to take Sam Ruby’s advice, which was to adapt the copyright license used by the Apache Software Foundation.   Specifically, for comments posted starting today, you retain ownership of your copyright.  In return for having your comment posted, you grant to me:

“…a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute your comment contribution and derivative works thereof.”

As noted in the agreement, I thus reserve the right to republish such material in any form, but I promise to make reasonable efforts to retain the attribution to you.

I apologize again for the concerns that the original policy raised, and I hope that this policy is an improvement.  Thanks to Sam, Ben Adida, all the commentators on the original thread, and everyone who helped me to understand the concerns and the options. To everyone who reads the Arcane Domain blog, your comments are always very much appreciated!

Noah

Topics: Arcane domain blog, Non-technical | 1 Comment »

One Response to “Comment Copyrights Redux”

  1. Laurens Holst Says:
    May 17th, 2009 at 5:18 PM

    These terms seem much more reasonable :).

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