[cc-community] Why "Wiki license" = CC-BY-SA?

Rob Myers rob at robmyers.org
Mon Jan 14 15:11:26 EST 2008


v111p wrote:
> Does anybody here know why Creative Commons decided that the best license  
> for a wiki site is CC-BY-SA, rather than, say, CC-BY or other non-copyleft  
> license? Perhaps there is an explanation somewhere?
> 
> http://creativecommons.org/license/results-one?license_code=by-sa&wiki=true

I would guess that it best reflects the current most popular Wiki 
licence (thanks to Wikipedia), the GNU FDL.

The FDL is copyleft, which is a good way of sharing value in a community 
around a project such as a wiki.

BY would allow people to take the contributions of thousands of people 
and make those contributions part of a project that excluded those 
people. That is not a good basis for collaboration and would discourage 
contributions.

People can still use BY or BSD or Public Domain dedication for a Wiki if 
they want to. The existence of the CC Wiki "licence" doesn't prevent this.

- Rob.


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