On 6 October 2011 07:31, Richard Symonds <chasemewiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Small point of order though: I was of the
understanding that OGL is not quite
compatible with CC-BY - AFAIK, it's something to do with database rights. I'm
not an expert on this, though, and am happy to be corrected.
IANAL, but I did work with the ones that came up with OGL and implemented it.
OGL is essentially CC-BY with additionally-released database rights;
this means that it's what CC-BY would have been had it been
implemented in the EU, rather than the US. As I understand it, an OGL
item (be it a database, an image, or otherwise) can be used as if it
were CC-BY and combined with CC-BY (or more stringent, e.g. CC-BY-SA)
items, which is Wikimedia's use case. There are no problems in using
OGL works within the Wikimedia family, or taking such works and
re-using them commercially - indeed, these were two of the core use
cases we were trying to encourage.
However, I believe that it is possible to construct some situations
where CC-BY content cannot be merged into an OGL item (something about
a database created by an EU individual which they release under CC-BY
but do not waive their Database Right) - but this is outside of the
Wikimedia family's use case, and I believe should anyway be dealt with
by CC-4.0 which looks to include the Database and Moral Rights.
Hope this helps.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester(a)wikimedia.org | jdforrester(a)gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]