Project:Copyright and attribution policy
This wiki contains a rich collection of teaching material that I am delighted to let others use. When they do so, I ask that they follow the policies concerning copyright and attribution that I outline below.
I have not in the past attached a copyright notice to documents appearing on the wiki, but as a matter of policy I began to do so in May, 2011. Whatever the legal status of whatever documents lacking copyright notices remain accessible, I request and insist that the attribution policy apply to them also.
Copyright
I hold and retain copyright in all materials posted on the wiki, and in all the text of the wiki itself, except where it is explicitly stated or otherwise obvious that the copyright belongs to others.
Users of the wiki are granted permission to make a single copy of the material for their own study, or multiple copies without modification for use with a class.
If asked, I will willingly grant permission to others to copy and modify the documents or the text of the wiki, or to quote extensively from them, provided that my copyright notice is maintained or reproduced. For the avoidance of doubt, I state explicitly that republication, and especially commercial publication, of material from this website is prohibited except with explicit permission.
Attribution
Most of the documents on the wiki have an attribution under the title. If you adapt the document to use in a course you are giving (and whether I've been able to provide you with the TeX source or not), then you must maintain the existing attribution while if you wish adding one of your own, and ensuring that this policy is followed also by those to whom you subsequently pass on custody of the document.
For a set of notes or a laboratory manual, the appropriate thing is to keep the existing attribution and add a second line showing who has made the adaptation and takes responsibility for the document being up to date. I suggest this format:
Laboratory Manual
Mike Spivey, Michaelmas Term 2009,
adapted by Fred Bloggs, Michaelmas Term 2010.
Problem sheets that are largely unchanged should be treated like other documents. On the other hand, if after your changes fewer than half of the problems are taken from the sheet as I left it, then you may change the by-line and mark the original problems like this:
- 1. [Mike Spivey] Discuss the design of a program to keep track of library loans.
I try to do the same thing myself when I use a problem I've picked up somewhere else. Such borrowing of problems without explicit permission is allowed only for class use, and not for publication in any other form.