[FLORA.org HelpDesk] Re: Information about web space?

[p***@ncf.ca]

Thank you!
We hope to run a small website to provide information about our club and
network with other paleontology groups.
The only material we would have on site would be publicly available and in
relatively open formats (ASC, RTF, JPG, GIF). Just to clarify: Neither of
these agreements would prevent the use of copywrite on articles we publish
would they?

How do we make a formal application (I couldn't find it at the FAQ)?
-Jonas Weselake-George
P.S. do you know if ZIP compression format is considered vendor neutral
these days?

"It is true, and you want to start with the FAQ to find the basic
details.

http://www.flora.org/flora/faq.shtml

Most important feature to know is that FLORA.org is part of the Creative
Commons (CC) and Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) movements.
Content and software published on a FLORA.org site must be in a CC/FLOSS
(or similar) license, as well as available in vendor-neutral Open
Standards file formats."

-
Message part of the FLORA.org HelpDesk: http://www.flora.org/flora/help/

[Russell McOrmond]

Post by p***@ncf.ca
Thank you!
We hope to run a small website to provide information about our club and
network with other paleontology groups.
The only material we would have on site would be publicly available and in
relatively open formats (ASC, RTF, JPG, GIF).

Careful with RTF as it is not always interoperable. If you use
Microsoft Office your RTF files won't be compatible with the documented
format (even though another part of Microsoft is the author of the
format).

Post by p***@ncf.ca
Just to clarify: Neither of these agreements would prevent the use of
copywrite on articles we publish would they?

I don't understand the question as you asked it.

Creative Commons licenses are license agreements for works that would be
used by a copyright holder. It doesn't prevent the use of copyright but
assumes you are the copyright holder. If you are not the copyright holder
then you need to get that copyright holder to license the work in a CC or
equivalent Open Access license agreement.

You aren't allowed to post things onto your site where the copyright
holder did not authorize its public distribution. This isn't a FLORA.org
rule, but international Copyright law. The CC licenses are an Open Access
set of licenses which liberally authorize distribution, so that minimum
requirement clears up any problems of that type.

When you say "use of copyright", what do you mean? If you want to
restrict what people can do with the materials you publish via FLORA.org,
what types of restrictions do you want to make?

There are animations at http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/ that explain
the Creative Commons concept. There are also archives of this mailing
list at http://www.flora.org/flora/help/flora-admin-help/ where things
have been discussed in the past.

Post by p***@ncf.ca
How do we make a formal application (I couldn't find it at the FAQ)?

There is no formal application process. Once you understand and agree
to the terms of use for FLORA.org, and I agree that what you are doing
fits with FLORA.org, then you choose a flora.org/yourorg/ URL and I set
you up with an FTP password.

Post by p***@ncf.ca
P.S. do you know if ZIP compression format is considered vendor neutral
these days?

ZIP is vendor neutral, and is used as the container for open file
formats such as the OASIS open office XML format (the native format used
by OpenOffice.org, and the standard format for office suites). ZIP is
just a container, and it is what is in the container that would be of
interest.

[Krishna E. Bera]

Post by Russell McOrmond

Post by p***@ncf.ca
P.S. do you know if ZIP compression format is considered vendor neutral
these days?

ZIP is vendor neutral, and is used as the container for open file
formats such as the OASIS open office XML format (the native format used
by OpenOffice.org, and the standard format for office suites). ZIP is
just a container, and it is what is in the container that would be of
interest.

The Zip file format is in the public domain by its creator's wish,
but if you use the new RC2, RC4, DES, 3DES and AES encryption features
the files will not be readable by software other than PKWare's.
If you use the open standard encryption built in by Winzip instead,
you are in danger of being sued for patent violation.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/32066.html

Therefore, do not use any Zip encryption and everything will be fine :)
-
Message part of the FLORA.org HelpDesk: http://www.flora.org/flora/help/

[Russell McOrmond]

Post by Krishna E. Bera
Therefore, do not use any Zip encryption and everything will be fine :)

Supporting people putting password-protected files up on
FLORA.org isn't something that follows the guidelines anyway, so
shouldn't be a problem here. If someone wants to distribute information to
a short list of people with a password, they are encouraged to hire
commercial services to do so.

As to interoperability, we really need to get governments to fix this
problem by disallowing interface copyright or software patents which only
harm innovation and creativity (IE: harm the purpose of copyright and
patents).