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

Terry Hancock hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Mon Jan 14 15:48:41 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

A copyleft is useful for a wiki because it promotes contributions to be
made to the wiki and prohibits proprietary forking.

Consider:

Wiki licensed CC-By...
	* Content can be reused for any purpose
	* User decides to copy the content, add own material
		and release under a proprietary license
	* Result derivative cannot be copied back into wiki
		(without seeking permission)
	* Information gets spread over multiple proprietary
		sites which cannot share and original wiki
		becomes of reduced value

Wiki licensed CC-By-SA...
	* Content can be reused for any purpose
	* User decides to copy the content, add own material
		and republish under copyleft-required CC-By-SA
	* Useful material can be ported back into original wiki
		by anyone
	* Original wiki grows in value, regardless of how much
		material is copied and expanded on other sites
	* Because the original wiki is of higher utility than
		forked wiki and requires no extra maintenance,
		the lazy behavior is to contribute content
		to the original wiki instead

Needless to say, this is only a rule of thumb. There may be mitigating
circumstances which encourage other choices. But CC-By-SA is a good
default.

Cheers,
Terry

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



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