[cc-licenses] compatibility plans between GFDL and CC-by-SA

Bernd [Skriptenforum.net] papa_schlumpf at skriptenforum.net
Thu Dec 21 10:41:11 EST 2006


What exactly has actually happend to achieve a better compatibility between 
the GNU Free Document licence and the CC by-sa licence as well as 
interchangeability between content licenced in either licence,as announced by 
Lawrence Lessig and Eben Moglen:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Document_Licenses_and_the_Future_of_Free_Culture   
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/76501

Me and some fellow university students started an online project (german only, 
located at www.skriptenforum.net ), where students can share lecture notes 
they have taken down in the university courses they are attending, thus 
creating a huge pool of learning materials for students of all possible 
courses at universities in Austria. In the hope of being one day able to also 
use GFDL-licenced content in our project such as that from Wikipedia, we 
decided to switch from the noncommercial CC by-nc-sa to the more free CC 
by-sa licence. Now we are even in the process of transferring the static 
upload/download mechanism into an interactive Wiki-based system, which would 
even further facilitate the use and mixing in of some Wikipedia based 
content.

Since we believe that the CC licence (which is also adapted to Austrian law) 
is a lot stronger in a legal sense than the GFDL, switching to the GFDL is no 
option. Besides, a lot of other great CC-licenced content would then be left 
locked out from mixing in, so this would not really be a wise solution.

I really wonder how far these ideas have developped at the moment. I have just 
briefly read through the GFDL 2 draft released 25th of September, but was not 
able to find any hint for more compatibility between these two licences. Nor 
have I found hints in the version 3 CC-licence drafts...  Also, I tried to 
contact the Software Freedom Law Center (www.softwarefreedom.org) which was 
proposed by Lawrence Lessig for handling this change (see again 
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/76501 ) as well as Lawrence 
Lessig himself and received no answer.

Since I find that there is absolutely no sense in hindering the mixing of GFDL 
and CC-by-sa licenced content, I would be really very disappointed and 
frustrated if the glorious announcements would not result in any outcome at 
all.

sincerely, Bernd



More information about the cc-licenses mailing list