Concerns: CC-BY and Debian

Daniel Carrera dcarrera at math.umd.edu
Fri Mar 11 23:03:00 EST 2005


Greg London wrote:

> If you put someone else's GPL stuff in your document,
> you can only use the GPL license for the end result,
> CC-BY very nearly puts the work in teh public domain,
> which is something the GPL will not allow.

I have no intention of putting anyone's GPL work into the guides. The 
mixing I was thinking of was the other way. That is, being able to put 
parts of the user guides into a GPL program. For example, if I wanted to 
expand OpenOffice.org's help system (lord knows it needs help).

> My surprise wasn't thinking you were leaving CC-BY,
> my surprise was that you were mixing the strongest copyleft
> license in existence with a 'weak' license that is
> very well near Public Domain.

I don't think it's so surprising. I like the CC-BY. But I want the work to 
be GPL compatible. Dual licensing means I am giving more freedoms to my 
readers. They can do everything they could before, with the plain CC-BY. 
And they can also do a few things that they couldn't before (like put it 
inside a GPL program).

For the user guide, I like having a 'weak' license. A dual CC-BY / GPL is 
weaker than a pure CC-BY. I like that. It makes the work more flexible. It 
can be used in more situations than it could before.

Cheers,
-- 
Daniel Carrera          | I don't want it perfect,
Join OOoAuthors today!  | I want it Tuesday.
http://oooauthors.org   | 



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