"Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com schrieb:
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
Mav's position, as he is stating it, is more extreme (and simply wrong IMO), since he is claiming (I believe) that a noncopyleft licence like CC-sa is not free to begin with. Still, mav does have a point, as I said here:
If CC-sa = Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license, then I think you are confused (or at least made a typo). The CC by-sa is in fact more libre/copyleft than the GNU FDL since it does not have provisions for invariant sections. Thus its copyleft status is more permanent. The CC-by license is merely gratis with the only real requirement being attribution.
It's NOT free, you say? So, I may not use it freely? You DO have a strange definition of 'free'.
So mav can reasonably argue (along with the FSF) that a copyleft licence increases freedom overall, because it enforces freedom for derivative works. But it does not increase the freedom of the ''original'' document -- as even the FSF would agree -- and could only decrease ''that'' freedom. (And that was your point, Andre, which I agree with.)
Decrease that freedom? How when anything from a derivative work can be reincorporated back into the original? In what way does that decrease the freedom of the original document?
By restricting how it may be used. What other way could there be to decrease freedom?
Andre Engels
--- Andre Engels engelsAG@t-online.de wrote:
It's NOT free, you say? So, I may not use it freely? You DO have a strange definition of 'free'.
Not libre, which in this context means it is only half free. Yes, you can *use* it freely, but the content itself is not free.
Decrease that freedom? How when anything from a derivative work can be reincorporated back into the original? In what way does that decrease the freedom of the original document?
By restricting how it may be used. What other way could there be to decrease freedom?
Those restrictions are designed to ensure the freedom of the content, meaning it can not be controled.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
Andre Engels wrote:
It's [a CC-by document] NOT free, you say? So, I may not use it freely? You DO have a strange definition of 'free'.
Not libre, which in this context means it is only half free. Yes, you can *use* it freely, but the content itself is not free.
Here, mav is using the word "free" in a nonstandard sense (which Andre might fairly call a "strange definition"). According to most people that use the term, like the FSF and Debian, a CC-by document, a BSD-licensed document, and a PD document are all free. In the absence of a copyleft, however, derivative works may become non-free. (The original work, however, will ''always'' be free.)
By restricting how it may be used. What other way could there be to decrease freedom?
Those restrictions are designed to ensure the freedom of the content, meaning it can not be controlled.
And thus, arguably, the restrictions are justified for the cause of freedom. Nevertheless, they remain restrictions on freedom.
Also, you don't need a copyleft to keep "it" -- the original document -- from being controlled. A PD document is always PD, a CC-by document is (assuming that the original licensor indeed had the right to license it) always CC-by, and so on. Only derivative works may be controlled. Thus for example, the PD Grimm fairy tale Schneewittchen remains free, even though the Disney movie Snow White (a derived work) is not free.
I believe that mav, Andre, and I all have slightly different opinions about what is important in regards to freedom and how to safeguard it. But it's very difficult to discuss these things with imprecise language. That's why Richard Stallman makes such a big deal out of terminology, even to the point that he annoys people. I use RMS's terminology, even though I disagree with him on some points as well.
-- Toby
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