[cc-community] CC-BY content usable under GFDL
Matthew J. Agnello
matt.agnello at gmail.com
Mon May 5 20:11:11 EDT 2008
> Being able to choose which copyleft license you get
> to apply to a derivative would be about the worst
> possible thing a license could do. Just pick the weakest
> license.
This is true. However, without that mobility, it also means that a
work becomes "proprietary" to a particular license -- that is, you're
once again forced to broker a deal with the copyright holder to gain
access to the work if you want to use it in a particular way. I can't
mix CC BY-SA work and LAL work even though they are functionally
equivalent licenses (in fact, they're probably similar in strength as
well). I have to get permission from the copyright holder to use his
or her worki n a CC BY-SA licensed final work. The copyleft-ness
undermines itself when it stops people from expressing their free
speech rights, and this goes for software as well.
There has to be some sort of standard copyleft license that everyone
uses, or a reasonable method of converting a work from one license to
another while preserving the original license's important qualities.
In fact, if there were to be a standard, there should still be some
conversion method anyway because there would be no way to migrate the
thousands of works under different licenses to whatever that standard
might be.
On the other hand, this may be the limit of all copyleft licenses. To
misquote US General Patreus, perhaps there is no legal solution.
Best,
// Matt
--
Matthew J. Agnello
http://hungryfilmmaker.com/
< matt.agnello at gmail.com >
On May 5, 2008, at 4:58 PM, Greg London wrote:
>
>> To go all esoteric for a moment, isn't it
>> conceivable to have a copyleft with
>> the option to modify in ways that do not
>> negate the four freedoms?
>
> It's conceivable. But that isn't what defines copyleft.
>
> What defines copyleft is the idea that the work and
> some subset of its derivatives are placed under the
> same license as the original, and that license may
> or may not have any particular restriction.
>
> different copylefts offer different types of protection.
>
> GNU-GPL protects against patents, DRM, tivoization,
> and has a source code requirement. But it only applies
> it's copyleft-ness to derivatives that are *distributed*.
>
> The GNU-LGPL is exactly the same, exect it only applies
> it's copyleftness to works which are functionally
> related to the original work. compiling doesn't always
> make a derivative in GNU-LGPL, but it does in GNU-GPL.
>
> The apple open source license applies it's copyleft-ness
> to *all* derivatives, distributed or not.
>
> The CC-ShareAlike license doesn't have a patent clause
> and doesn't have a source code requirement.
>
> It was these sorts of differences I was trying to
> objectively quantify in "Libre Labyrinth"
> http://www.greglondon.com/libre/index.htm
>
>> aren't we making efforts / exploring ideas
>> to allow movement between essentially
>> compatible Free Copyleft licenses?
>
> The OpenHardware community would be best served by
> something like the Apple license, something that
> extends to all derivatives, whether distributed
> or not. If there were some sort of clause that said
> you can apply the Apple license, or any other copyleft
> licence, then someone who wanted to abuse the community
> work would create a derivative, apply the CC-SA license
> instead, wouldn't have to worry about the copyleft-ness
> because he wouldn't distribute the work, only silicon,
> and he wouldn't have to worry about source code requirements
> or any of the other restrictions in the Apple license.
>
> Being able to choose which copyleft license you get
> to apply to a derivative would be about the worst
> possible thing a license could do. Just pick the weakest
> license.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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