Mike Godwin wrote:
Newyorkbrad writes:
I'm also curious how the problem can run in both directions. I can understand that one license would be more restrictive than the other, such that material from project A couldn't be freely used in project B. But the nuances of the license requirements must be subtle indeed if the incompatability runs both ways. Not being a license terms aficionado, I'd appreciate a layman's explanation of the issues.
Keep in mind that this is unexplored territory even for me, but I can give you my impressions of the problems I see with the three licensing options Knol offers.
- With regard to CC-BY:
It's not a question of one license's being more restrictive than the other, exactly. It's that the Share Alike (SA) requirement, which makes the content truly copyleft, can't be added or subtracted in any straightforward way that I can see. (Note that for purposes of simplicity I am lumping together GFDL -- Wikipedia's current licensing standard -- and CC-BY-SA. Their requirements are substantively mostly the same although formally different.)
How could you add SA, for example, without being the original licensor, for importing to Wikipedia? How could you subtract it without being the original licensor(s), for importing to Knol?
Perhaps I am being just too dense, but my answer would be _not_ "without being the original licensor(s)". That is, by *being* the original licensor, or by obtaining their explicit permission.
I am not clear that CC-BY constitutes an explicit permission to use in Wikipedias current fashion, since I am not either a copyleft specialist, but I could imagine some would so argue.
We have, as far as I know, no problem accepting contributions from people who live in countries which acknowledge "moral rights", such as my own (Finland), and which are thus fundamentally *more* restrictive than CC-BY as a baseline in a form that makes is so that PD does not really exist in those countires at all.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen