On Dec 1, 2007 7:22 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 6:27 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
I don't know of anyone who doesn't want their photographs being used in freely licensed work. The contention on this point is that the creative commons cc-by-sa, per the position pushed by the creative commons allows people to make non-free works out of cc-by-sa images. There are people, myself included, that think this defeats the purpose of free licensing in this context.
So would you be willing to license your images under the GFDL, and interpret that to mean that Wikipedia can still use them in its encyclopedia which is released under CC-BY-SA? If so, that seems like a reasonable compromise. Relicense the text under CC-BY-SA, but allow the authors to choose any free license for the images.
And then, when a stronger copyleft version of CC-BY-SA comes out (say CC-BY-STRONG), you could license your images under that as well as the GFDL. Personally I'd argue for "Preparation of derivative works is permitted provided that you cause any such work to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." Then it'd cover any derivative which can possibly be covered by copyright law. But it might be too US-centric.
My own license which I wrote goes as follows: "Copying, distribution, public performance, public display, digital audio transmission, and use of this work is permitted without restriction. Circumvention of any technological measure or measures which effectively control access to this work is permitted without restriction. Preparation of derivative works is permitted provided that you cause any such work to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." Very US-centric, though, and doesn't require attribution, which probably makes it unacceptable to most people.