You seem to be assuming that what you say is my only source for understanding this situation.

How arrogant. How many second opinions do you need for what is plainly obvious? If I said that 1+1=2 would you demand a second opinion? I’ve already pointed you to the IPO Website for proof of what you seem incapable of grasping. Is the IPO wrong as well? I could call Larry Lessig and ask him to explain the cc-by-sa to you too, one word at a time, with a dictionary on hand for words of more than one syllable, if you think that’d help.

AFAICT the only “sources” you seem to be drawing on are your own idiocy, and the plagiarists who committed this copyright violation in the first place. You’re clearly not interested in the author’s own opinion, nor the community’s, nor even the word of the license itself. In fact you seem to be suggesting that the work isn’t even copyrighted at all. You have the mentality of a kleptomaniac in denial.

You believe the inclusion of a license within a zip file of a work is enough to legally mean that work is published under that licence. I do not … what about a combined work containing more than one different licence file.

Oh for God’s sake don’t be an idiot Mike. This is clearly a single work by one author. How many other copyright assertions do you see in that package? None.

Do I take it that you are challenging Anthony’s right to even claim any rights to his own work now, because that’s what it sounds like you’re driving at?

I believe the phrase “at least as prominent as” refers to the prominence in the original work. I now understand you believe otherwise.

Here’s a clue for you, the word “as” is a comparative which actually requires a secondary entity to compare to. How exactly does one compare something to itself? Obviously this term refers to the original attribution being presented in a manner that is “at least as prominent as” other attribution for derivative works. How can you possibly fail to grasp that? This is kid’s stuff Mike.

You believe it doesn’t matter if they only used a single word from one of his files

So now in addition to deliberate obtuseness you resort to hyperbole to try to make a point. Here’s what I actually wrote, in case anyone reading this should simply take your lies at face value: “A derivative work is a derivative work, no matter how “little” of the original remains, provided that what does remain is actually identifiable as having come from that original work.”

Unless Anthony has invented a language all of his own, how could a “single word” be uniquely associated with his work, such that he could assert copyright over it?

Idiot.

And by that I believe I’m being kind, since I must assume that your apparent inability to accept even the most simple concepts is not in fact motivated by malice. After all, you are a “Free Software developer”, ostensibly at least.

You accuse me of lying and you call me a disgrace. I no longer wish to discuss this.

You do, you are, and good riddance.

Next!

“Good grief! Every single point you made above is utterly; utterly wrong … by a huge factor. It’s like you haven’t read anything I wrote at all, much less understood it. Are you being deliberately obtuse?”

You seem to be assuming that what you say is my only source for understanding this situation.

First you say:

“I understand he has automatic copyright in his work without needing a copyright statement.”

But then you make this contradicting statement:

“he didn’t have a copyright statement in the theme in his name.”

There is no contradiction in those two statements.

Here is a summary of where I believe we disagree:

1) You believe the inclusion of a license within a zip file of a work is enough to legally mean that work is published under that licence. I do not believe that without an explicit statement to say the license is to be used, that this is so.

Consider this: what about a combined work containing more than one different licence file. Do all the component parts fall under all the licences simply because those other licences are distributed?

2) I believe the phrase “at least as prominent as” refers to the prominence in the original work. I now understand you believe otherwise.

3) I believe NMM when they say they only used Anthony’s CSS file and that his attribution in the file is enough. You believe it doesn’t matter if they only used a single word from one of his files, they should attribute him in a prominent place on the site.

These fundamental differences in belief and interpretation of the licence and the situation mean we can never agree.

You accuse me of lying and you call me a disgrace. I no longer wish to discuss this.

Good grief! Every single point you made above is utterly; utterly wrong … by a huge factor. It’s like you haven’t read anything I wrote at all, much less understood it. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

First you say:

“I understand he has automatic copyright in his work without needing a copyright statement.”

But then you make this contradicting statement:

“he didn’t have a copyright statement in the theme in his name.”

But as I’ve already tried to explain to you … his “attribution” in both style.css and footer.php is his “copyright notice”, according to the law, since he only needs to state he is the author to have that work copyrighted.

You seem to think that it can’t be a copyright assertion unless it contains the word “copyright” or the “©” symbol. Please refer again to the IPO, or better yet call them and ask them directly … please. Hopefully they’ll have better luck getting you to accept and understand this than I apparently have.

By asserting authorship of his work, that work is automatically protected by copyright, regardless of the presence or lack thereof of the word “copyright”. That copyright protects him in accordance with the license under which the software is distributed, and the license as provided in “license.rtf” demands the original attribution is “at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit“, which in this case it is not, in fact it is not visible to casual site visitors at all, much less “prominently” so.

“Yet, you claim “they shouldn’t have changed the copyright notice”, and others have claimed that “his copyright statement was removed”. There is no copyright notice in the theme.”

You keep repeating this nonsense.

According to copyright law, merely stating that you are the creator of a work is sufficient to give you copyright status. It’s right there in black and white on the UK IPO Website. Why do you have so much difficulty understanding that?

“Your suggestion in you comment on his blog, is what he should have done to make it clear which licence his work is published under. But he didn’t do that with the Networker theme.”

He did everything he was supposed to do. He simply didn’t account for stupid; unethical or predatory people who would exploit his work illegally, so I proposed something to make it clearer to such people. That’s all. It’s NMM who have made a choice to ignore Anthony’s license terms, not Anthony who failed to state those terms. You’re just making excuses for them.

“Anthony did not release his Networker theme version 1.0 under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licence version 3. There is no indication which licence it is published under.

Yes there is. The work is licensed under the terms described in “license.rtf”, which is a legally binding document that forms part of the entire covered work. NetWorker is distributed as a package, both in technical and legal terms. You cannot arbitrarily rip pieces of it out to try to avoid the licensing terms, especially when the piece that is ripped out is the attribution that is the copyright assertion.

“The file license.rtf included in the zip, might imply” that he means to specify this license”

It’s doesn’t “imply” anything. It is unambiguously the factual and legal document that applies to the rest of the covered work in the most obvious fashion, since it forms an inextricable part of that package’s distribution. License files are the standard means of conveying copyright assertion for nearly every Free Software package in existence (a fact that I would have assumed that you of all people would understand), and even most proprietary software too. To take a sideways glance at license files whilst proclaiming that you’re “not sure” if they apply, is the most arrogant and obtuse thing I’ve ever heard, and I think you’ll find that any good lawyer would rip you and that pathetic defence to pieces in seconds.

“but as you point out, it is titled one thing and contains the content of another.”

Irrelevant. Now you’re just making excuses by clutching at straws. I could include the body of the cc-by-sa, but call it the “NMM are a bunch of Plagiarists – license Version 1.0″, it would make zero difference to the defensibility of those terms, since the terms of an individual license are whatever the author wishes them to be. The GPL, the cc-by-sa, or any other license document is only a template that suggests terms under which the author should license his work. I find it hard to believe that you’ve been involved with software development so long and yet cannot grasp that simple fact. The wording in “license.rtf” is the actual terms that apply, regardless of how it’s headed.

“It is hard to be clear what is intended when it is not clearly stated.”

It’s clear that the author mistakenly titled his license, it’s clear that those terms apply regardless of how they are titled, and it’s clear that you are trying to slither out of the issue by being deliberately obtuse.

“Section 4 paragraph 2: “You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License” — There are no notices that refer to the licence.”

There doesn’t need to be. The mere presence of license.rtf is all that is needed. You’ll notice that the license does not read “You must have notices to this license”, it merely states that if there are any then they must be left intact. Surely anyone with even an ounce of intelligence can deduce that.

“Section 4 paragraph 2: “you must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work” — there are no copyright notices.”

Why do you keep blatantly lying about this?

As I’ve already pointed out, several times now, claiming authorship is a “copyright notice” as far as the law is concerned. You seem to be deliberately ignoring that fact.

“Section 4 paragraph 3: which is all about credit and attribution but too long to quote here, but does say this: “Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit. And that is exactly what NMM did: Anthony’s credit/attribution is exactly as prominent as it was in the original work: in the CSS file.”

This is a ludicrous conclusion, that you’ve misinterpreted and then misrepresented. “Comparable authorship” does not refer to the “same work” nor “as it was before”, it refers to other work that is supplemental to or a derivative of the original. The whole point of that entire paragraph is “derivative work”, as it quite clearly states. NMM have only maintained one part of the attribution in their derivative work, but they have removed the other which was far more important, since it was that removed part that actually displayed attribution prominently. You are simply comparing changes to a single component, whilst ignoring changes to the rest, but the copyright covers the whole work, not just conveniently selected parts of it. Given that under copyright law attribution == copyright, and that the only prominent copyright notice on that site is “Crown Copyright”, Anthony’s original attribution is therefore not displayed “as prominently” as “other comparable authorship credit”.

“You state “Once again, the prominent display of his attribution, as explicitly required by both the license and Anthony’s express wishes, has been deliberately removed by NMM, and replaced by only a single explicit copyright notice that attributes copyright to the Crown.” They haven’t removed his attribution, because they are not using his footer (or any of his PHP files).”

It’s is precisely because they are not using it, or an equivalent thereof, that they have removed his attribution from that part of his work that would otherwise have displayed it “as prominently” as their own.

“The Crown copyright is not anything to do with NMM”

That’s completely non-sequitur. The only copyright asserted explicitly on that site is “Crown Copyright”, regardless of who placed that copyright assertion there.

“Here is a link to the wayback machine’s archive of the Number 10 site copyright page from January 2008. Clearly not a WordPress page created by NMM.”

Irrelevant. We’re discussing the present situation, not the history of that page. Web pages, their contents, the software they run on, and the license terms under which all of the above are governed, may change over time. It is only the present which is relevant.

“Clearly stating the material on the site is Crown Copyright. Not the theme, not WordPress, not Apache or PHP. Not created by NMM and therefore NMM are NOT claiming that the Crown own the copyright of the theme as you state.”

But it is not clear at all, since the only explicit assertion of copyright is to the Crown, with only a vague disclaimer at the bottom regarding “any material on this site which is identified as being the copyright of a third party”. That’s perfectly acceptable for Wordpress, Apache and PHP, since none of those works are distributed under licenses with attribution clauses, but Anthony’s NetWorker theme is, but that attribution is neither being maintained in the full and original manner, nor even “as prominently” as the only other explicit attribution on that site, “Crown Copyright”. Therefore although the Crown is not explicitly claiming copyright for NetWorker, they are nonetheless using a derivative of that work without attributing credit “as prominently” to the original author, as per the terms of the license for that work. Since they are not honouring the terms, then by implication they are claiming exclusive rights to that derivative work. In other words, unless anyone (we) knew anything to the contrary, it would appear that the Crown is claiming credit for that work. That is plagiarism.

“Your example of you writing a piece of software with a splash screen sounds great, but is not applicable. There are some problems with your analogy, firstly the license in this case states “at least as prominent as”, which is very different from your example “you must retain prominent attribution”.”

You really are being intolerably obtuse. Obviously credits in the splash screen and “about” dialogue box are more prominent than those hidden away in a source file that no one will ever see, and therefore removing the original attribution from those locations will mean that attribution is no longer “as prominent as” the new attribution for the derivative work.

“A more appropriate analogy might be if I took the file handling routines from your software, but all the rest of the application was my code.”

Irrelevant. You keep honing in on this idea that “size matters”. It doesn’t. A derivative work is a derivative work, no matter how “little” of the original remains, provided that what does remain is actually identifiable as having come from that original work. In this case, NMM have already admitted that their work is a derivative of Anthony’s NetWorker theme, so identification is moot.

“And if your source files contained your copyright notice and license statement, and I provided those source files with my application.”

But what if you don’t? You’ve presumed that my analogy was about Free Software, but it might just as easily have pertained to proprietary software. So where is the attribution for my work now? Do you see the problem yet?

In the case of the derivative of Anthony’s theme, it might just as well be proprietary from the perspective of site visitors, since few of them will know how to access that file containing attribution to the original author. In fact it will probably not even occur to them to even try. Therefore Anthony’s attribution has been lost, because is is not being displayed “as prominently” as the Crown Copyright notice. In fact it isn’t being displayed at all.

“Of course if your licence explicitly required a prominent attribution, I would have to follow those requirements. But the CC licence does not “require a prominent attribution”, merely one “at least as prominent” as the original.”

Again this is entirely non-sequitur, since NMM are neither displaying Anthony’s attribution “prominently” nor “at least as prominently” as their own. If you’re going to waste time nit-picking in order to justify copyright violation, then at least try to have some kind of logical and factual basis for it.

“That is exactly what NMM have done.”

Rubbish, they have done no such thing.

I see “Crown Copyright” on the No10 Website, but where is Anthony’s equally prominent attribution?

“Anthony’s attribution remains in the derived CSS file.”

Anthony’s attribution remains hidden away in the derived CSS file that no one will ever see. Meanwhile that other component that previously displayed his attribution has been surreptitiously removed.

“I hope I have spelled out for you why I believe there is no licence violation:”

No, you’ve spelled out that you will support NMM no matter what, even if they (and you) are completely wrong, as I and others have proved over an over again, despite their (and your) total inability to either accept or understand those conclusions.

“* The work was not explicitly licensed.”

Lie. The clear and unambiguous inclusion of the license file contains the legally binding terms for the entire covered work in that software distribution.

“* The new work derived from the original (the single CSS file) actually meets the requirements implied by the presence of the file license.rtf”

The “single CSS file” is not the “entire covered work”, and even the use of that “single CSS file” is in violation of the license, since the original author’s attribution is not displayed in a manner that is “at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit”, which in the case of the No10 site is the “Crown Copyright”.

I find your position on this matter utterly deplorable, especially given your background. I simply can’t believe the extent to which you’re going to deny Anthony attribution to his work. If you are so reluctant to recognise contributors work, in whatever manner they wish to be recognised, then please remind me to never contribute anything to any of your projects, because I’d hate to become a victim of plagiarism, like Anthony has.

AFAIAC you are a disgrace to the Free Software community.

I’m glad you decided not to give up!

That’s interesting you mention Puffbox. I kept coming back to their site on several occasions last night whilst doing further research… More later

With regards to Dave’s point about the “theme code” I can read too. I have just trawled back through various other sites where I am sure I read a comment by Dave that suggested (or it might have even more strongly worded) more than just the theme had been code had been changed. So that is where my query arose. Unfortunately I can’t find the original source yet. I’ll keep looking though.

Where you quote me as saying “You even say “They are now stuck with…” I find it really strange why you continue to not read the full sentences/paragraphs. I started that paragraph with an If and I concluded it with: “I hope I am wrong and the backend is a regular Wordpress release but if it isn’t, then Downing Street really have been sold a pup and are not using Open Source code at all.”

Thanks for correcting my error regarding OSS and Free Software. I do realise the distinction, but to be frank, most consider the two interchangeable and OSS is certainly more widely used a term than “Free Software” and free is very easy to misunderstand in this context.

Regarding who used what from where, there are multiple points here. There is the odd comment tag left lying around that pops up in the HTML, so I would guess that they didn’t just evaluate. They have also left all of the original images, text documents etc. lying around too. That isn’t really just evaluating, that’s copying and using the bits that you need in my book.

As I have said repeatedly, the design of the Number 10 site a derivative work. No one is contradicting that. The issue is about fair attribution and there is a copyright notice in Anthony’s footer (will this get eaten by the comment system? It is the line of php code from the original footer if it does get mangled):
” Copyright © 2007 <?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?>. Design by <a href=”http://antbag.com/”>Anthony Baggett</a>” which clearly contains his name.

Removing this line (or perhaps not including it somewhere equally as prominent) is breaching his copyright. Number 10’s site is a derivative work.

Oh yes, I still haven’t heard from you what the percentage of the original work needs to be included before it becomes derivative. Although I have looked, I can’t find it anywhere either.

But both of you use inflammatory phrases and speculation about this matter. And those things seem to me to be designed to stir up the less diligent reader who will take your cleverly phrased questions as hard facts.

I am a fervent supporter of GPL and CC licences, copyleft, and software freedom (I’m a fully paid up member of the FSF) but mis-representing any of these licenses, and seeing violations where there are none, do nothing to help the cause.

On a general note, I believe this issue is a classic illustration of why the CC licences are not appropriate for software, just as the GPL is not appropriate for a song or a literary work of fiction. The CC family are great for songs, artwork, and books, but just unworkable for software.

And I do urge you both to take that step of installing Anthony’s theme and checking the HTML, I outline above.

Here is the corrected version of what I meant to say, (I tried to avoid being critical of Anthony at a time when he feels a victim of all this), “Anthony did not release his Networker theme version 1.0 under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licence version 3. There is no indication which licence it is published under. The file license.rtf included in the zip, might imply that he means to specify this license, but as you point out, it is titled one thing and contains the content of another. It is hard to be clear what is intended when it is not clearly stated.

But I read the content of the file, and base my comments on that content. Here are some pertinent points from that file:

Section 4 paragraph 2: “You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License” — There are no notices that refer to the licence.

Section 4 paragraph 2: “you must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work” — there are no copyright notices.

Section 4 paragraph 3: which is all about credit and attribution but too long to quote here, but does say this: “Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit.”

And that is exactly what NMM did: Anthony’s credit/attribution is exactly as prominent as it was in the original work: in the CSS file.

You state “Once again, the prominent display of his attribution, as explicitly required by both the license and Anthony’s express wishes, has been deliberately removed by NMM, and replaced by only a single explicit copyright notice that attributes copyright to the Crown.”

This is the crux of my point, and my belief that NMM have not violated any licence conditions: They haven’t removed his attribution, because they are not using his footer (or any of his PHP files). The Crown copyright is not anything to do with NMM – Here is a link to the wayback machine’s archive of the Number 10 site copyright page from January 2008. Clearly not a WordPress page created by NMM. Clearly stating the material on the site is Crown Copyright. Not the theme, not WordPress, not Apache or PHP. Not created by NMM and therefore NMM are NOT claiming that the Crown own the copyright of the theme as you state.

Your example of you writing a piece of software with a splash screen sounds great, but is not applicable. There are some problems with your analogy, firstly the license in this case states “at least as prominent as”, which is very different from your example “you must retain prominent attribution”. A more appropriate analogy might be if I took the file handling routines from your software, but all the rest of the application was my code. And if your source files contained your copyright notice and license statement, and I provided those source files with my application. Of course if your licence explicitly required a prominent attribution, I would have to follow those requirements.

But the CC licence does not “require a prominent attribution”, merely one “at least as prominent” as the original. That is exactly what NMM have done. Anthony’s attribution remains in the derived CSS file.

I hope I have spelled out for you why I believe there is no licence violation:
* The work was not explicitly licensed.
* The new work derived from the original (the single CSS file) actually meets the requirements implied by the presence of the file license.rtf

On Dave’s post about the subject, section 6, second paragraph, he states “Given the security issues surrounding the project, i cannot release the theme code we developed to you,”, (my emphasis), yet you speculate about an secret version of WordPress.

You even say “They are now stuck with a version which will get harder and harder to maintain, and will ultimately be less secure than the publicly developed OSS code that has the world’s eyes watching and improving it every day….”. That’s not asking a question. That’s making an inflammatory statement based on your earlier speculation. By the way WordPress is GPL licensed Free Software not OSS, there is a fundamental difference, one which is at the heart of this issue: you cannot require attribution for GPL licensed works.

You say “NMM have admitted they used Anthony’s theme.” No, they haven’t, they have admitted evaluating Anthony’s theme and using his CSS (which they attributed to him), see section 3 of Dave’s statement. And the evidence backs them up in this.

Once again, I urge you to install Anthony’s theme in a populated blog, compare the generated HTML with the HTML generated by NMM’s theme, and evaluate whether the Number 10 site could have been generated from Anthony’s PHP code.

This is verifiable evidence you can check for yourself, regardless of rights, wrongs, or anything else.