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

[Robert Rohde]

On Dec 1, 2007 3:32 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> On 12/2/07, David Gerard <dgerard at 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.
>
> Worst possible reason to like a license, ever. :-)
>
> Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
>
>

In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions
unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image.  Anything
less, is little better than CC-BY.  Most people that use photographs do so
for the purposes of illustration rather than for the purposes of making
derivative images.  Hence copyleft provisions that apply only derivative
images, and not to the text being illustrated, are intrinsically weak and of
little impact.

-Robert A. Rohde