[cc-community] CC and wiki

Terry Hancock hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Sun Oct 14 14:58:12 EDT 2007


maiki wrote:
> ... CC-BY-NC-SA.
> My reasoning for this was
> that I was going to use it to write down my brilliant ideas, and I 
> figured that if someone ended up using a creative writing or some other 
> licensable tidbit that I had posted there I would want it to stay open 
> for everyone.

If this is your actual concern (that the work stay open), you should
drop the "NC" term and publish under the CC-By-SA.

If you have no intent to sell licenses to use your "brilliant ideas",
then you probably shouldn't be using "NC". The only economically
rational reason for using NC is that you plan to make income by selling
commercial rights to the work.

That's possibly nice for you, but it has to be balanced by the fact that
contributors to your wiki get an unequal deal, and they may not want to
contribute as a result (which is not so nice for you).

> Recently I have been leaning towards a much more liberal license, 
> specifically CC-BY.

Naturally, CC-By is a perfectly okay license for a wiki, but it will not
ensure that the work "stays open". It will allow a scenario like this:

1) User downloads content from your site
2) User modifies it extensively
3) User publishes the result on his own site
4) You are NOT allowed to download his modified version or use it to
update your wiki

The "SA" term specifically eliminates #4 -- it makes use of the work
conditional on licensing derivatives under CC-By-SA, so that you could
then copy the user's work back onto your wiki if you so desire.

That being the case, it's most likely that the user would just
contribute the work to your wiki, which is even more desireable from
your PoV.

> How would you license a wiki?

I'd use CC-By-SA in most cases.

> When one attributes the work, who does one attribute, the wiki, the 
> contributor, both, or some other combo/entity?

I would make it a policy that citing the wiki is adequate. Tracking
attributions finer than that is a burden on the end user that seems
unnecessary to me. Getting exact histories is something the wiki
software will probably allow anyway.

HTH,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com



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