[cc-community] "CC-GNU GPL" & GFDL

Terry Hancock hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Thu Feb 28 23:20:39 EST 2008


Chris Watkins wrote:
> The CC-GNU <tr_1204163091589>GPL
> <http://creativecommons.org/license/cc-gpl>mark is a CC tool for
> marking GFDL content - a great tool that gives a
> highly visible mark, and presumably it will allow for searching when
> specifying a free license.
> 
> But there is no such tool for the GFDL license - is this correct? Why is
> this?

That's easy, it's competition. ;-)

CC acknowledged early on that the CC licenses were not good for
software, so it is a specific CC recommendation to use GPL (or LGPL) for
software. Thus CC needed deeds for those licenses.

But the GFDL is a content license, which competes with CC-By-SA and
therefore CC doesn't recommend it (neither do I for that matter, GFDL is
needlessly complicated and can be "non-free" if you use the invariant
sections parts).

There's also about a dozen semi-common non-CC content licenses out there
that also compete with various CC licenses. Must CC give them all "equal
time"? I don't think it makes sense to.

Presumeably, the sponsoring organizations for those licenses could
provide a similar "deed" if they wanted to. Alternatively, a neutral
organization like http://freedomdefined.org might decide to take it on.

Cheers,
Terry

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



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