[Commons-l] Is copyleft unfree?

[Robert Rohde]

I have recently been discussing a possible change in licensing for my future
works.

The details of that discussion aren't important at the moment, but there is
one point I would like to raise before the larger community.

I was told by Lupo (whom I eminently respect) and others that adding binding
copyleft [1] provisions to my work would be incompatible with the concept of
"free works" that Commons employs. [2]

In broad terms, the kind of copyleft I was considering is the strongly viral
sort.  Specifically, if you use this image, then the remainder of the
document/work that it appears in must be either have been released from
copyright or be placed under one of several acceptable copylefts (e.g. GFDL,
CC-BY-SA).  It has always been my intention that this be applied in such a
way as to be compatible with Wikipedia, Citizendium, Encyclopedia of Earth,
other works published under copyleft.

Paradoxically, I was told that a requirement for making future works free is
itself "unfree", since Commons adopts the position that freedom must be
"available to anyone, anywhere, anytime" [2], and requiring copyleft on the
larger document unduly restricts who can use it and when.


One of this reasons this confuses me is because Stallman and the FSF already
consider the GFDL to be strongly viral.  In specifics, their intent was that
the "aggregation" provisions of the GFDL be construed narrowly, and that all
other works be classed as "modified versions" such that the work as a whole
would be subject to copyleft.  Specifically the aggregation provisions in
the GFDL says that a work may be combined "with other separate and
independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium...  if the copyright resulting from the compilation is
not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what
the individual works permit." [3]  They really intended this to be limited
to situations like seperate documents on hard drive, or seperate songs on
CD, where the relevant works are very clearly distinct and independent.  It
is not legitimate, in the FSF opinion, to mix GFDL images or text with
materials that are less free than the GFDL in any single document.

As you may be aware, this is not the same as the position of Creative
Commons with respect to CC-BY-SA.  Creative Commons considers their copyleft
to be much less viral and only apply to directly modified works.  In other
words, the copyleft on CC-BY-SA images only requires a further copyleft on
modified images, and not on any of the accompanying materials.  In
particular, you can mix CC-BY-SA images with generic copyrighted text,
without violating their terms.

This difference in viral degree reflects the different goals of the FSF vs.
CC, with the former focused on creating free content while the latter is
more focused on giving options to authors and changing the way copyright
works.  You may also be aware that resolving this is one of the sticking
points in discussions to make the GFDL and CC-BY-SA compatible.


Having summarized the above, I consider my position as closely aligned with
the FSF interpretation of the GFDL.  In other words I want free works to be
those that give rise to more free works by virally expanding copyleft.  I've
been told that in effect this is not an acceptable goal for materials on
Commons.  And by immediate extension that the FSF interpretation of the GFDL
is also essentially "unfree".  (I will note that a strict application of the
GFDL copyleft would exclude the use CC-BY-SA on any page bearing GFDL
content, and in practice that is not the way Common/Wikimedia behaves.)  It
is also worth noting that I already apply the FSF interpretation of the GFDL
with respect to the GFDL images I have published.  In other words, I expect
and demand that reusers copyleft their documents when they incorporate my
GFDL images into them


So, I would like to get feedback from the community about whether viral
copyright is acceptable within the context of Commons' free content goals?
And if not, what should be done about the GFDL which the license's authors
(and some publishers, like myself) already consider to be strongly viral,
even though in practice the Wikimedia projects don't often treat it that
way.


-Robert A. Rohde



[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
[2] http://freedomdefined.org/Definition - Definition of Free Works
[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License
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