Talk:Lambda Papers

Permission

Since the original memos, though freely redistributed, did not include any explicit copyright waiver, i emailed the authors to request clarification, which resulted in the following exchange, and explicit confirmation to publish them under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

(See also the original discussion here.)

From: Piet Delport <pjdelport@gmail.com>
To: Guy Steele <guy.steele@sun.com>, Gerald Sussman <gjs@csail.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 02:38:01 +0200
Subject: Transcribing AIM-349 and the other Lambda Papers: copyright status?
Message-ID: <a235d3430909221738q34b5825eu18458718290b0ffb@mail.gmail.com>

Dear Mr. Steele and Mr. Sussman,

I am humbly writing to ask about the original Lambda Papers, as hosted
on <http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html>, and hope this email
finds you. While studying these texts, it bothered me that no clean
transcription of them seems to exist online, so i took it upon myself
to make and (if possible) publish one, so that people may benefit from
better access to these works.

I imported and began transcribing AIM-349 on Wikisource (an online
library dedicated to preserving intellectual works throughout
history),[1] working on the assumption that the Office of Naval
Research funding qualifies it as a copyright-exempt work of the U.S.
Government, but another user raised doubts about this.[2]

I decided the most hopeful course of action is to query you as authors directly:

* What exactly is the copyright status of AIM-349 and the other Lambda
Papers? (or the AI Memos in general?)

* If you do not object to transcriptions of these papers, would it be
possible for you to explicitly dedicate or license them as free
content, to be compatible with Wikisource's policy[3]?

I hope you can find the time to respond; it would be great to see
these papers cleanly preserved for posterity.

Thank you,

Piet Delport

[1] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Scheme_-_An_interpreter_for_extended_lambda_calculus.djvu
[2] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Possible_copyright_violations#Scheme:_An_interpreter_for_extended_lambda_calculus
[3] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Copyright_policy

From: gjs@csail.mit.edu
To: Piet Delport <pjdelport@gmail.com>
CC: Guy Steele <guy.steele@sun.com>, phw@mit.edu
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:02:28 -0400
Message-Id: <E1MqHBc-0001mW-5U@binah.csail.mit.edu>

Hi there Piet!

   I have no idea if there are any legal problems with those papers.
I never thought about that!

As far as I am concerned those papers are free for anybody to use,
with appropriate attribution.  I am sure that was our original intent.

You should just grab them and make whatever copies you like.  I cannot
think of anyone who would challange you.  But if you are really
worried about it, we can ask Patrick Winston, who was the director of
the AI laboratory at the time the papers were written.  In fact I am
copying this message, with your message, to him.

Pat: Are there any problems that I am not aware of?

			  Gerald Jay Sussman

From: Patrick Henry Winston <phw@mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:39:38 -0400
Message-ID: <4AB9ECDA.6090906@mit.edu>

Gerry is correct.  There is no problem as long as appropriate attribution is included.

-- 
Professor Patrick H. Winston
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 251 | 32 Vassar Street | Cambridge, MA 02139
Email: phw@mit.edu | URL: http://people.csail.mit.edu/phw/ | Voice: 617.253.6754

From: Guy Steele <Guy.Steele@Sun.COM>
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:13:57 -0400
Message-id: <4E25116A-A989-460C-812C-5C4FD8634DED@Sun.COM>

If it's okay with Gerry and with MIT, it is okay with me!
I would also request attribution.

Thanks for doing these transcriptions and making them available.

--Guy Steele

From: Piet Delport <pjdelport@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:56:54 +0200
Message-ID: <a235d3430909290956v6f3d4a72s1011b17d78c4236a@mail.gmail.com>

Thank you!

Unless you prefer a different license, i'll go ahead and tag the works
on Wikisource with the Creative Commons Attribution license[1]
(allowing free distribution and reuse as long as attribution is
given).

[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

From: Guy Steele <Guy.Steele@Sun.COM>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:59:38 -0400
Message-id: <BE07C588-5933-4B47-B2C3-DC1A33D9E0A2@Sun.COM>

Sounds good to me.

--Guy Steele

From: gjs@csail.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:26:36 -0400
Message-Id: <E1MsgTE-0000Xa-5q@maharal.csail.mit.edu>

fine with me.