[FM Discuss] license thread

[Delirium]

adam hyde wrote:
> My proposal then, is that we use the flexibility we have, as the
> copyright owners to allow anyone to use the content under any CC or FSF
> license. This means it can be used under the GPL (which is good for
> developers), the FDL (which means it is good for wikipedia etc), the CC
> licenses (which means it is is good for use by bloggers, on websites
> etc).
>
> This would be something like a license (eg .TRFL - 'the really free
> license' ;). 
>
> So the content would be covered with something like:
> "(c) [author] you may use this material with any CC or FSF license"
>
> I can visualise some kind of image that could be placed on each page, -
> somehting like the Creative Commons images, with a gnu and a (cc) side
> by side with a 'tick' over each to show we approve of both.
>
> So this would mean we are 'outwardsly compatible' ie. anyone could use
> our content under a CC/FSF license. I mean we want to ensure as many
> people as possible get to use free software (right?), so lets not
> inhibit that aim by being caught up in these license stand offs.
>
> To preserve the floss manuals content we might then make a copy of all
> floss manuals material periodically and keep it on our servers and use
> the GPL to cover it. This means it is free forever.
>   

Well, there are some pros and cons here. The pro, as you mention, is 
that more licenses means more reuse. The two cons, though, are:

1) Multi-licensing has the inherent pitfall that if some downstream 
reuser chooses to use the content under only one of the licenses and not 
multi-license their edits, their modified version can't be reintegrated 
into the original multi-licensed version. For example, if someone took a 
work-in-progress manual, imported it into Wikibooks under the GFDL, and 
polished it up to a nice work, the improvements couldn't be reintegrated 
back into flossmanuals unless flossmanuals were willing to use just the 
GFDL for that manual.

2) If there are non-copyleft licenses as options among the multiple 
licenses, then a downstream reuser can basically "take it proprietary", 
refusing to freely license their modified version of the manual. For 
example, a company could use a flossmanuals manual under cc-by as the 
basis for a commercial manual, and keep their improvements proprietary, 
since the only thing cc-by requires is that they credit the original 
authors, not that they freely license their own contributions too 
(cc-by-sa adds that requirement).

A strategy that would avoid #2 (but not #1) would be to multi-license 
under only copyleft licenses, probably GPL, GFDL, and cc-by-sa. For what 
it's worth, Wikimedia Commons' suggested license for users uploading 
their own media is similar: dual-licensed under GFDL and cc-by-sa 
(probably only missing GPL because nobody realizes it can apply to 
non-code).

-Mark