Re: ISMLP/WIMA (?)

[David Kastrup]

PMA <address@hidden> writes:

> Oh -- all *my* compositions.  Sorry, I should have thought to specify
> this.

Well, you said you don't care about royalties.  So apparently what you
do care about is artistic integrity.  The question is how you can
achieve your goals while providing a maximum of usefulness to others.

First you need to note that your artistic integrity is not preserved by
hiding the source code.  If anybody is interested in plagiarizing your
work, he can just scan and retypeset it.  The only thing that prevents
this is using a suitable license for _all_ forms of the work, including
the PDF.  I don't know the usual artistic licenses, but even a license
intended for pure program code like the GPL has a clause:

      5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.

      You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to
    produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the
    terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

        a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified
        it, and giving a relevant date.

The GFDL (a document license) states:

  4. MODIFICATIONS

     You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document
     under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you
     release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with
     the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus
     licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to
     whoever possesses a copy of it.  In addition, you must do these
     things in the Modified Version:

       A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title
          distinct from that of the Document, and from those of
          previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed
          in the History section of the Document).  You may use the
          same title as a previous version if the original publisher of
          that version gives permission.

       B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or
          entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in
          the Modified Version, together with at least five of the
          principal authors of the Document (all of its principal
          authors, if it has fewer than five), unless they release you
          from this requirement.

       C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the
          Modified Version, as the publisher.

       D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.

       E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications
          adjacent to the other copyright notices.

       F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license
          notice giving the public permission to use the Modified
          Version under the terms of this License, in the form shown in
          the Addendum below.

       G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant
          Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document's
          license notice.

       H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.

       I. Preserve the section Entitled "History", Preserve its Title,
          and add to it an item stating at least the title, year, new
          authors, and publisher of the Modified Version as given on
          the Title Page.  If there is no section Entitled "History" in
          the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors,
          and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page,
          then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in
          the previous sentence.

       J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document
          for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and
          likewise the network locations given in the Document for
          previous versions it was based on.  These may be placed in
          the "History" section.  You may omit a network location for a
          work that was published at least four years before the
          Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version
          it refers to gives permission.

       K. For any section Entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications",
          Preserve the Title of the section, and preserve in the
          section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor
          acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.

       L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document,
          unaltered in their text and in their titles.  Section numbers
          or the equivalent are not considered part of the section
          titles.

       M. Delete any section Entitled "Endorsements".  Such a section
          may not be included in the Modified Version.

       N. Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled
          "Endorsements" or to conflict in title with any Invariant
          Section.

       O. Preserve any Warranty Disclaimers.

[...]

Now of course, legalese is tiresome.  But I think that there are
probably existing boilerplate licenses that capture the desire of what
you want and not want to be possible to do with your work better than
your plan of just putting up PDFs without thinking much about the
license.  This concerns in what forms your work will live on (and the
normal copyright conditions lock down everything that is not explicitly
allowed for one lifetime after your death, after which it is completely
free for the taking.  Perhaps you want to have more of an influence on
its fate than this default provides).

With regard to LilyPond, a recurring question is "how do I deal with the
problems of real-life music typesetting".  Serious complete examples
help a lot here, not just because of their musical content.

Serious complete examples also help in benchmarking and tuning LilyPond
for production work.  "Valentin's opera" does not get updated while
LilyPond evolves.

If your work was worth writing, it will certainly also be worth thinking
about the form in which you consider it best to make it available.

All the best

-- 
David Kastrup