The n-Category Café

To answer my own question: yes, apparently they are so obliged. From the legal terms of the licence I used:

If You create an Adaptation, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Adaptation any credit as required by Section 4(b), as requested.

(Section 4(b) basically says that people making derivative works must credit the original author unless requested otherwise.)

So if I was bothered by the gobbledegook derivative that increpare made, I could request my name to be removed from it. I must admit that I was actually freaked out for a minute when I first saw it: the bizarre gibberish nature of the derivative, the capital letters in the comment, and the lack of real name made me feel that I was being stalked by a psycho. But then I calmed down.

I’m also very much in favour of the CC-type licences. But one thing I’ve learnt in the past few weeks is that there are many different ones out there and not all are suitable for everything. GPL is great for code, but not so good for documents, CCs are great for documents, but not for code. And if you want to mix-and-match stuff, then there can be competing conditions on the licences so it well behoves you to choose carefully.

For opinion pieces, then I don’t see the need to allow derivatives and can see several arguments for not allowing them, so I would choose one that allowed distribution but not modification.

For textbooks, I would definitely allow modification as one of the values of having that sort of textbook would be that lecturers could easily adapt them to the needs of the course (rather than having to adapt the course to the needs of the textbook, as so often happens). Some licences allow you to designate certain sections as “immutable”, meaning that they cannot be changed. I can envision a situation where the introduction was considered “one unit” (which could be included or not, but not modified), and the main text was modifiable.

(There are a couple of linear algebra textbooks that have been released under the GPL, by the way.)

For articles, I would want a different licence; perhaps the Mathematics Public Licence. I would want it to be something like:

1. You are free (indeed, encouraged!) to take the mathematical ideas and modify them as much as you like. This includes verbatim copying of theorems, definitions, and proofs. But you are required to refer to the original article.
2. You are free to distribute the article as a whole, providing its content is unchanged. You may modify the formatting or presentation style to suit. In particular, you may convert it to another format (for example, an accessible format). Any modified version should contain a reference to an unmodified version.
3. Any modification must be released under a likewise licence.

One could argue that mathematics is in the public domain anyway, but as the CC0 licence points out, sometimes it is good to explicitly put stuff in to the public domain. Also, licences like the GPL exist to ensure that stuff that is, to all intents and purposes, in the public domain stay there.

Presumably in most jurisdictions libel laws will come into play.

Yes, sorry: I was just poking fun at how difficult to parse it is. It took me a good half-dozen passes to get it. Maybe I haven’t read enough German, Austen or physics. I don’t know whether it’s the German, the physics, or pure natural brilliance that allowed Urs to apparently read it without blinking.

There are similar sentences sprinkled through the review. I agree with Jim that they’re an obstacle to communication. And it’s really a stingingly negative review.

Here’s my parsing of it:

String theory itself
  or 
    , better and more broadly,
  the conceptual apparatus of much of modern theoretical physics
    , above all of relativity theory, statistical physics and quantum field theory
      , whether in its original form as quantum electrodynamics, 
      or as the basis of the standard theory of weak and strong interactions,
      or as string theory,
is mathematics
  , or seems to be,
although often not mathematics of a kind with which those with a traditional training are very comfortable.

I think Tom’s parsing gets it exactly right. If I were to rewrite that sentence, I would make a much wider use of punctuation (e.g., throw in some dashes and parentheses, to help convey the rhythm and establish dependency of clauses).

Jane Austen is a good author to train yourself on:

If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth’s change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if otherwise – if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment.

Oh dear, I was thinking this was about the content of the sentence.

How naïve of me.

Henry James seemed to often write like this, at least in the later books (or so I’m told). The opening page or two of The Ambassadors give some idea of this.

Incidentally, I was once told off by an acquaintance for repeating a line I’d read in the newspaper poking fun at James’s incomprehensibility. She said that if you actually follow the sentence rather than let your eyes wander nervously over it, the meaning or description is usually clear.

In defence of Langlands’s sentence, it does seem to be uniquely parseable; at least, I can’t see another solution. But I found the meaning difficult to uncover. It would be a different story if it were read out loud — I reckon that if read with the right emphasis and intonation, it could be made much more easily comprehensible.