Copyright

[Roger Hyam]

The software industry/community has been faced with very similar
copyright problems themselves. Basically how do you build on other
peoples work - which is what we all want to do. The answer that was
arrived at was the GPL (General Public License) and variations on it
that include LGPL (Lesser General Public License) etc.

Basically if something is released under GPL then it MUST be freely
distributed.

See here for more info:

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Now if some one were to produce a database of taxon/name data that was
released under GPL people could copy it and add to it and others would
not subsequently be able to re-copyright that same material.

Trouble with this idea is that institutions are so caught up in their
old ways of thinking they are never likely to make information truly
free (as in speech not beer). This is why: If major taxonomic databases
were released under GPL it may turn out that the people who would
produced the best and most reliable version (and who therefore had the
ability to attract associated funding) weren't based in the current
major institutions - shock horror! This is an unthinkable thought for
major institutions. They would see GPL as giving away the family silver.
They would no longer be able to put there feet up and say "were working
on it".

Botanists out there - imagine an Index Kewensis that you had the right
to improve on and redistribute! In 10 years time you may be downloading
the best version from a young institution based around a dedicated team
in India or Brazil or where ever.

Any how I have said enough and will put my soap box away for a while.