[Kdeev-books] First cut - scripting chapter, dcop chapter and structure

[Ralf Nolden]

On Sonntag, 31. August 2003 15:14, Brad Hards wrote:
> On Sun, 31 Aug 2003 23:09 pm, Ralf Nolden wrote:
> > We could also have any individual have the copyright with granting the
> > KDE e.V. the right to publish the documents, modified or unmodified,
> > according to the needs of the KDE e.V. If someone has some experience
> > with such a procedure, please show up :-)  We could also ask at the GNU
> > project/FSF how to deal with that procedure; they probably have some
> > experience there.
>
> I guess this is my main concern. I wrote it. I don't want a bunch of people
> on the other side of the world (that I haven't met, let alone trust)
> revoking my rights to do whatever I want with it.
>
> Is there public information on the past activities of KDE e.V.? Like
> records of decisions taken, financial position, and the like?

The thing is that the KDE e.V., besides the FreeQt/KDE foundation with 
Trolltech, wasn't very active in the last years. Since we think that 
restructuring the KDE e.V. to the needs of the KDE project in the coming 
years ahead (remember KDE has already ~700 participants) we're proceeding as 
we speak. The developer conference in Nove Hrady was accompanied by a KDE 
e.V. meeting to pass the new bylaws to work around most issues that a legal 
instance with people world wide is facing by any law: physical presence and 
tax exemption status. Now after the meeting the court has to accept the new 
bylaws so we can get the tax exempt status in germany for donations that are 
tax-reductable.

Other than that, the individual members are also KDE developers, that means 
that the regulating of CVS accounts, webspace, mailinglists and mail 
addresses is taken care of by them (sysadmin at kde.org).  This also ensures 
that the development community gets the requirements fulfilled for dynamic 
needs on request in the same way that we work inside KDE.

Of course, this entity is open to new members (due to the changes in the 
bylaws to accept proxy voting for people not being physically present) and 
offers different membership statuses depending on the requirements.

I know this is sometimes difficult to understand that this is an ongoing 
effort and that you certainly don't want to grant anyone rights that are 
exclusively your own rights primarily to prevent misusage of them. However, I 
think the goal of the kdeev-books project is to work with the e.V. to 
establish developer documentation that are available to anyone at any time 
with having the e.V. taking care of the things like copyright/license 
violations and publication - other documentation can of course be provided or 
linked to if authors aren't fine with the requirements for this books 
project. I mean, anyone is free to do what he/she wants in his/her free time 
anyway and as much as I recognize people being more willing to contribute to 
a project type like KDE where your single parts are still under your 
copyright but on the other hand I think in particular the documentation that 
is suitable to be provided as an add-on by the KDE e.V. is one resource that 
should fall under the KDE e.V.'s responsibility with the authors still having 
their copyright and all their rights, so you're not loosing anything. You 
just grant the KDE e.V. the right to publish your work, just like the KDE 
project publishes your sourcecode in conjunction with the rest of the KDE 
distribution of any KDE version.

Ralf


>
> Brad

-- 
We're not a company, we just produce better code at less costs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralf Nolden
nolden at kde.org

The K Desktop Environment       The KDevelop Project
http://www.kde.org              http://www.kdevelop.org
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