[Foundation-l] What's wrong with CC-BY-SA?

[David Gerard]

On 01/12/2007, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> It seems to me that CC has a history of addressing stakeholder needs.
> If we were to adopt one of their licenses, we would instantly become
> one of the most significant, if not the most significant, stakeholders
> -- and I do believe our concerns would be taken very seriously, as I
> think they already are.


Yep. CC 3.01 was rephrased from CC 3.0 entirely due to our concerns
re: Commons. Several CC people (including Joi Ito) are active on
commons-l.


> I really hope that your response to this decision will not be
> antagonism but engagement and feedback. There's basically, as far as I
> can see, two likely outcomes:
> - The Wikimedia community will support an immediate switch to
> CC-BY-SA, and the critics of the license will dig themselves into a
> position of extreme antagonism, asking their contributions to be
> removed, etc.
> - The Wikimedia community will work together in trying to help
> Creative Commons to improve CC-BY-SA, and then make the switch.
> I would prefer the second scenario over the first; I do think you have
> legitimate concerns that we should try to work on. Please help us to
> make that possible.


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.


- d.