Smart Kanji Book uses KanjiVG. Thank you!

[Thomas Schneider]

I would like to thank the KanjiVG for being a precious project in allowing me to write a kanji ebook, along with EDict, KWAT and Xetex.

I wrote Smart Kanji Book because I couldn't find a resource that would teach me only important kanji with RTK-style stories and associate them with words, which I found to be the best way to learn. So this ebook only contains 732 kanji with components, stories, stroke order and common vocabulary words.

You can find a free sample here and make sure I respected the CC-BY-SA licence.

Thank you again,
Thomas.

[Alexandre Courbot]

Hi Thomas,

I had a look at the sample and this seems to be a quite useful
resource, well built and pleasant to read. Nice work.

Unfortunately it seems that you are violating the CC-BY-SA license
KanjiVG is distributed under:

"Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you
may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar
license to this one." (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
)

Without any doubt your book is built upon KanjiVG, and I can see
nowhere a place where one can download the Xetex sources for the whole
book, or a mention of a compatible license for your work on your
website. Note that doing so does not prevent you from charging a fee
for downloading the compiled book ; however you cannot produce
non-free (as in free speech) derivatives from KanjiVG.

I hope you will find the time to fix this important detail quickly -
that should not prevent you from getting many (paying) readers,
considering the quality of the work.

Thanks,
Alex.

[msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Mon, 18 Nov 2013, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> nowhere a place where one can download the Xetex sources for the whole
> book, or a mention of a compatible license for your work on your
> website. Note that doing so does not prevent you from charging a fee

Careful. CC-BY-SA doesn't require source code. There is no mention of
source code in the license text at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

The prohibition on "effective technological measures" might forbid
deliberate obfuscation of source code when source code happens to be
distributed, but the works for which CC was designed are things like
photographs and musical recordings, for which (people imagine...) there's
no meaningful concept equivalent to source code and it wouldn't make sense
to require it. This is one reason I don't like using CC licenses for
anything that is even sort of like software; I *want* a requirement for
source code and CC doesn't include such a requirement. If KanjiVG were
itself a document written in XeTeX one might argue that distributing a
modified version should include distributing the modified XeTeX source
code; but that is not the case here. I think distributing just a PDF
could be enough. Of course it would be a big no-no to set the PDF flags
that forbid copy-and-paste, or similar; that's the "technological
measures" issue again.

CC-BY-SA forbids relicensing derived works under non-free licenses, and
the "All rights reserved" license (i.e. no license grant at all) stated on
the book's copyright page is a problem for that reason.
--
Matthew Skala
msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/

[Alexandre Courbot]

On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 1:06 AM, <msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca> wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Nov 2013, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
>> nowhere a place where one can download the Xetex sources for the whole
>> book, or a mention of a compatible license for your work on your
>> website. Note that doing so does not prevent you from charging a fee
>
> Careful. CC-BY-SA doesn't require source code. There is no mention of
> source code in the license text at
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode
>
> The prohibition on "effective technological measures" might forbid
> deliberate obfuscation of source code when source code happens to be
> distributed, but the works for which CC was designed are things like
> photographs and musical recordings, for which (people imagine...) there's
> no meaningful concept equivalent to source code and it wouldn't make sense
> to require it. This is one reason I don't like using CC licenses for
> anything that is even sort of like software; I *want* a requirement for
> source code and CC doesn't include such a requirement. If KanjiVG were
> itself a document written in XeTeX one might argue that distributing a
> modified version should include distributing the modified XeTeX source
> code; but that is not the case here. I think distributing just a PDF
> could be enough. Of course it would be a big no-no to set the PDF flags
> that forbid copy-and-paste, or similar; that's the "technological
> measures" issue again.

Good point. I was actually hesitating between GPL and CC-BY-SA
(actually we started with CC-BY-NC-SA before switching) but went for
the latter because of the blurry line between "source code" and
"artistic" (?) data with KanjiVG. In the end it's definitely not a
computer program.

The "remix" clause is difficult to enforce if the source code of the
work (whenever it applies) is not available, but I was afraid using
the GPL would precisely create problems for the cases where is does
not apply.

> CC-BY-SA forbids relicensing derived works under non-free licenses, and
> the "All rights reserved" license (i.e. no license grant at all) stated on
> the book's copyright page is a problem for that reason.

Yes, precisely the point I am trying to explain to Thomas, and the
CC-BY-SA is very clear about this. I hate this kind of situation -
obviously Thomas did not try to rip the data since he had the courtesy
to announce his project here. So I really hope the terms of the
licence will be acceptable to him and that he will be able to conduct
his project successfully. Free as in speech does not mean you cannot
sell your work and does not interfere with that goal in a world where
piracy is the shameless standard.

Thanks,
Alex.