Are Decks derived work of anki?

[Diogo V. kersting]

Hello.

I was wondering, if a deck made with anki/ankidroid for anki/ankidroid
is considered derived work, and therefore has to be released under the
GPL terms.

Could someone sell decks for anki?

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Diogo V. Kersting

[Tomasz Melcer]

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W dniu 01.09.2011 14:30, Diogo V. kersting pisze:

> I was wondering, if a deck made with anki/ankidroid for anki/ankidroid
> is considered derived work, and therefore has to be released under the
> GPL terms.
>
> Could someone sell decks for anki?

I am not a lawyer, and most probably I do not live in the same
jurisdiction as you.

I don't think so. Anki is just a tool. There is no obligation to
distribute code compiled with GCC on GPL.

...unless you're going to distribute the decks together with
Anki/Ankidroid binaries or source code. Then it depends on
interpretation of GPL. Some people think this is necessary only if you
add code that is linked with Anki code (as in: a dynamic library,
.so/.dll file). Others think that the act of distribution of package
that contains anything on GPL is enough.

However, you certainly have to comply with copyrights/licenses of data
you used to create a deck, like definitions from dictionaries. For
example, it might or might not be allowed to distribute a deck which
contains definitions or examples from a dictionary, or from sources like
movies/literature. This is why I cannot share my decks with strangers on
the Internet...

Tomasz Melcer
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[Nicolas Raoul]

I agree with Tomasz, and the case of AnkiDroid is quite clear:

1) The code of AnkiDroid is GNU-GPL, so you have to comply to the
GNU-GPL if you want to redistribute AnkiDroid

2) The decks you created belong to you and you can disctribute them in
any way you want.

3) A company can create a deck and sell it, and everyone will be happy about it.

4) A company can create a deck, package it into a modified AnkiDroid,
and sell the package, provided they don't remove the mention about the
GNU-GPL in "About", and make the modified source code (Java, not the
deck) public.

Somehow unrelated topic:
I already talked with Damien about clarifying the license given to
decks that are uploaded as "shared decks". Some one of the decks
(including very popular and useful decks) are derived from textbooks,
and even though they are probably a case of fair use, it would be
difficult to leave the status quo and assert a license on them. I
don't remember exactly, but I think Damien is thinking about all that,
as part of the upcoming deck collaboration platform that will be a
part of 2.0 (see
http://ankisrs.net/docs/FrequentlyAskedQuestions.html#_towards_2_0 for
more info).

Even more unrelated:
Any Semantic Web junkies like me here?
I love dbpedia (RDF and CSV data lists extracted from Wikipedia's
structured info like infoboxes) and I think we could create a tool to
easily generate Anki decks from that. For instance it could generate a
deck of all UNESCO World Heritage Sites with picture, name, country,
map, or a deck of French 19th paintings with picture, year, artist,
movement. Anyone motivated?
The generated decks would be clearly Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike

Cheers!
Nicolas Raoul

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[Damien Elmes]

That is my understanding, too.

> Somehow unrelated topic:
> I already talked with Damien about clarifying the license given to
> decks that are uploaded as "shared decks". Some one of the decks
> (including very popular and useful decks) are derived from textbooks,
> and even though they are probably a case of fair use, it would be
> difficult to leave the status quo and assert a license on them.

As Anki grows beyond a hobby project there's an increasing chance of
me getting caught in the crossfire because a user uploaded material
without permission, so I had to add some terms and conditions to the
website which state that by sharing material you're asserting you have
permission to do so.

[Diogo V. kersting]

I completely understand now. Thank you.