[FM Discuss] license thread

Thu Aug 9 02:45:39 PDT 2007

..on or around Thu, Aug 09, 2007 at 11:07:35AM +0200, adam hyde said:
> how about licensing with :
> 
> "You may use this material with any CC or FSF license provided you
> permit FLOSS Manuals to use any modified or derivative work."
> 
> would that solve it?

some of the CC licenses (esp if you use the word 'any') might present the 
downstream problem of the work being re-licensed in a way that doesn't favour 
FLOSSManuals later. while you can say "provided you permit [..]" this doesn't
afford any protection in the event of legal bridges between licenses in
future - there are always loopholes.

i wouldn't be afraid to be staunch on this matter and operate under
single license terms. you can always back it up with a page explaining why 
'keeping it Free with a capital F' is important, in the sense of the 
heritage and health of these manuals.

your only immediate concern is that you may lose the odd contribution 
on the basis the GPL or GFDL doesn't suit people. perhaps it'd be good to
hear from someone as to why and in what cases the GPL wouldn't fit their
needs.

it is true that the GPL (or GFDL) simply may not be the best license overall. 
while i've used it with my own code for several years i've never applied
it to documentation and so i would look to other projects that have used it 
before putting all your bits in one basket.

that said, while the CC licenses are great and all (i use them for 
images/music), they haven't yet had their day in court (eg functioned as 
contested legal figures). moreso Lessig is stepping back from Creative 
Commons to focus on other things: it's possible the CC can not be relied 
on to adapt to changing conditions both technological and legal in time.

ultimately the question of licensing will return to the broader vision
of FLOSSManuals. if you can accomodate the idea of re-licensing and it's
complex symptoms then you might as well open up the licensable terms for 
contributed manuals widely and take it as it comes.

cheers,

julian

-- 
http://julianoliver.com
http://selectparks.net
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> 
> adam
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, 2007-08-09 at 00:05 -0700, Delirium wrote:
> > 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
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Discuss mailing list
> > Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> > http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
> -- 
> 
> 
> adam hyde
> floss manuals
> 
> free manuals for free software
> http://www.flossmanuals.net
> 
> mobile : + 31 6 154 22770 (Netherlands mobile)
> email : adam at flossmanuals.net
> 
> 
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