[cc-community] Using CC-BY-SA in web database editable by multiple users

Paul Houle paul at ontology2.com
Tue May 19 17:41:08 EDT 2009


Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> You can have users agree to designate the site as the entity that gets
> attribution (along with agreeing to license under CC BY-SA).
>
> (But I'm not a lawyer.)
>
>   
    That's a practical answer to the question which probably suits your 
needs while being reasonably fair to the contributors.

    Although it's generally treacherous to extrapolate between the GPL 
and CC-BY-SA,  this reflects a major difference in the licensing of 
different software products that are "GPL".

    In the Linux kernel,  copyrights are held by the contributors.  
Practically,  this means that Linux could never be relicensed,  because 
it would require the consent of all contributors.  A GPL program that 
has incorporated code from other GPL project also faces this issue.

    MySQL,  on the other hand,  was owned completely by MySQL AB.  You 
could contribute patches,  but you'd sign away the rights.  This way,  
the community gets a GPL MySQL (which can be forked) but MySQL AB has 
the right to license MySQL to other organizations on a different basis.  
We see how this has played out with acquisitions:  MySQL AB is now part 
of Oracle,  but Monty is free (just like any of us) to fork MySQL.  At 
this point,  however,  Monty doesn't have the right to release a non-GPL 
version of MySQL.

    Something similar could happen with CC-BY-SA.  If you own something 
lock-stock-and-barrel and it doesn't contain CC-BY-SA content that 
belongs to others,  you can relicense it.  You can't stop people from 
using older versions under CC-BY-SA but you can certainly release new 
versions that are under some other license.  You can also grant people 
rights that go beyond CC-BY-SA while still allowing everyone else to use 
it CC-BY-SA...  You're like MySQL AB.

    If,  one the other hand,  your CC-BY-SA project contains CC-BY-SA 
work from others,  then you're not free to relicense...  You're like Linux.




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