Re: License Islamic Holy material

[Abdalla Alothman <abdalla at pheye dot net>]

Asalamu alaikum,

On Tuesday 17 October 2006 12:51 am, Nadim Shaikli wrote:
>
> Here is a document [1] that M.Yousif had put together, but unfortunately
> this topic wasn't pursued (beyond various posts here arguing for the need
> to use new/special display technology which IMHO doesn't address our
> current needs) and nothing was accomplished.

To be honest, I was silently observing some people building the roof before
the house, but it's difficult to warn of such flaws as you might probably
understand.

> Not to cut this short, but we can certainly do both - the license might be
> meaningless to some yet a deterrent to others as such it might have some
> value given the proper restrictions are put in place (no harm done).

That's fine. But you should be aware of what you expect the power of
the license will present to you. We said that it is best to license what
comes from "your" (not you specifically, but anyone else) mind. Imagine
you issue a license, and you predict that someone else has used the
content. Probably you -- or someone else -- might take that person to
court. If that person proves by showing employment contracts or any
other evidence that he (it might be a small company) produced that
content by himself, then your case would be discarded. The evidence
can be original scans, employment contracts that state employee 1-30
were hired to scan and correct, or type a certain Hadeeth collection of
tafseer volumes.

But that's not the end of the story, that person might return to you
with some ripe compensation and request to annul the license
altogether because it applies on content that shouldn't be licensed.

In fact, any person who sees harm from that license can protest in
front of a court. But then again, the choice is totally up to you. :-)

On the other hand, if the license presents no power to protect the
content or some rights, it's useless. But that's my personal opinion,
of course.

> The 
> need to host and note various Hashes I think is a given on a per release
> basis.

This would be a good exercise so that nobody "releases" anything unless
it is properly audited and revised. Once the revision is proper there would
be no reason for multiple releases. Again, Islamic content is a type of
content that should be rarely edited and should contain minimal errors.

Wishing you and your family peace and good health.

Salam,
Abdalla Alothman