[cc-community] Open Hardware Licence

Patrick Godeau patrick.godeau at free.fr
Thu May 7 17:20:40 EDT 2009


Le 07/05/2009 22:24, Mike Linksvayer a écrit :
> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Patrick Godeau <patrick.godeau at free.fr> wrote:
>   
>> Sure! Incidentally, this is the same for CC licenses, if you read carefully:
>> "8. e. [...] This License may not be modified without the mutual written
>> agreement of the Licensor and You."
>> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
>>     
>
> Not at all. This has nothing at all to do with the copyright status of
> the license text.
>   

Right, a deeper enquiry on this interesting topic shows that CC license 
text is covered by the CC policy, which states that copyright is not 
asserted on license texts, but since "Creative Commons" is a trademark, 
modified versions should not be called "Creative Commons". More info here:
http://creativecommons.org/policies

>> Oh, by the way, read the 1st line of the GNU GPL:
>> "Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
>> license document, but changing it is not allowed."
>> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
>>     
>
> Also not relevant. The GPL is a copyleft license. GNU doesn't claim
> that the license text is copylefted.
>   

"Copyleft" is more a word play than a legal concept. In its general 
sense, it means that a copyright restriction is removed, provided that 
the same freedom is preserved on all copies. This is exactly what the 
"verbatim" notice means.

-- 
Patrick


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