On 7/21/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
The dustup is mostly about the "unported"
version. The language in
question does not appear in the US version. And it is REALLY
important to understand that people can reuse works
IN the US under the US version, even when they are released under the
"unported" version.
There's a clever bit of legal judo here, see?
Blah. Not more disagreement. :( I know everyone must hate me by now...
But that really isn't how the license is written, nor how it is
commonly understood.
The licenses allows downstream users to redistribute derivatives under
compatible licenses in the family:
cc-by-sa-3.0(unported) 4.b:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode
"You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under the
terms of: (i) this License; (ii) a later version of this License with
the same License Elements as this License; (iii) a Creative Commons
jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version) that
contains the same License Elements as this License"
Thats good. But this same ability is not extended to people who make
verbatim copies:
cc-by-sa-3.0(unported) 4.a:
"You may Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work only under the terms
of this License."
Nowhere else is the ability to relicense mentioned.
These permissions only apply to the license on works you distribute.
Even if you are able to redistribute your derivative under a different
license, you are still bound by the original license you received
since if you violate its terms you have no right to make or distribute
a derivative at all.
This was pointed out very early in our discussion on commons.
Were it not for the lack of ability to relicense verbatim copies
(4.a.) we would have simply made the Wikimedia Commons policy to
instantly relicense all cc-by-*-3.0-unported works to cc-by-*-3.0-us
and call it a day.
I can't imagine how annoyed you must be with me now. I am deeply
sorry, I owe you dinner six times over... but take my comments back,
and you'll find that even if the behavior I have described wasn't
intended, it is what is actually in the text.
I too have my lawyers. :) People who are unfamiliar with the licenses
have been demonstrated to interpret this as I have described.
If there really is some deep black magic here, invalidating all of
this, it needs to be documented, or better, removed and replaced with
clarity. We shouldn't need to depend on super-complex explanations to
make this stuff work.
If it's any consolation, I had no material complaints about the final GPLv3 ;)