Unitarian Universalism/Talk

I asked for official permission to include the UUA Principles and Purposes here:

From: David Merrill

Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2001 2:37 PM

To: 'mbenard at uua.org'

Subject: Principles of the UUA

Dear Ms. Benard,

I'm a volunteer with the Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia project (see http://www.wikipedia.com), and also a UU at All Souls Unitarian in Washington, D.C. I'm working on an article on UUism for the encyclopedia, and would like to include a copy of the "Principles and Purposes" (on the UUA website at http://www.uua.org/principles.html).

What exactly is the copyright? If they are copyrighted, can I have permission to use them?

The encyclopedia is a free project (the content is free for anyone to use as they wish, subject to one primary restriction -- that they must continue to make it free for others). It is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html). This makes it hard to answer your question as to whether there is the intent to realize a profit. Under the FDL, one can charge for distribution and such, but you can't charge for the content itself because you have to make it freely available. It's like the way the Linux operating system is licensed. Feel free to write if you have any questions.

Thanks,

--

David C. Merrill, Ph.D.

Sr. Software Engineer

And received this reply (my mail was forwarded to someone else):

From: Betsy Martin <BetsyMartin? at uua.org>

Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 10:31 AM

To: David C. Merrill

Subject: RE: Principles of the UUA

Dear Mr. Merrill,

Thank you for contacting the UUA with your permission request. Please consider this message official permission to include the UU "Principles and Purposes" in your article on UUism for Wikipedia.

Sincerely,

Betsy Martin

UUA Publications

---

It is surely a huge fallacy to call, for example, John Adams a "Unitarian-Universalist," which the article's list does. He's on the list presumably because he was a Unitarian; but I very much doubt that he would wish to be counted among the Unitarian Universalists, and if they considered his actual religious and political beliefs, I am sure today's Unitarian Universalists would not want to call him one of his own (except for the prestige of having a president among one's adherents!).

It seems to me we need a list of Unitarian-Univeralists, followed by a link to an article about Unitarianism, with John Adams on the latter list, but not the former. --LMS ---

Schweitzer's students were all Lutherans. His work certainly caused a schism among the Lutheran church. Are you -sure- he was UU? Ray Van De Walker

I pulled the initial list from www.famousuus.com/humanita.htm. I just did a search on google and found lots of other references. --Dmerrill