[Foundation-l] GFDL and relicensing

[Michael Noda]

On Nov 23, 2007 12:34 PM, Robert Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Some of this is that I get very confused when I talk about Creative
> Commons licenses.  You are talking about a specific license here, but
> that is IMHO one of the problems with this license.

Alright.  Permit me to suggest that *now is the time to get things
straight*.  You are now in a fairly deadly serious conversation which
turns on the terms and spirit of one and only one Creative Commons
license, CC-BY-SA.  All other CC licenses are irrelevant to this
discussion, because nobody in their right mind familiar with the CC
licenses would suggest that any other license was similar in spirit to
the GFDL.  To repeat, only CC-BY-SA is under discussion at this
moment.

The terms of the CC-BY-SA license are at:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Please take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with them.  A short
summary can be found at:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

if you don't have the time to read the details in full.

> I've known the Free Software Foundation, and RMS in particular, for some
> time now.  I may not agree with everything that RMS stands for, but he
> and the FSF is generally predictable and RMS has been very consistent
> for some time on the fundamental issues of intellectual property
> freedom.  I don't see the Free Software Foundation changing their
> licenses in a dramatic fashion to lose sight of that basic quest for
> Intellectual Property (software and the written word, but also
> trademarks and patents too) freedom.  In this regard, I suppose I can
> say that I don't have the same level of trust with Creative
> Commons...even if other may put the same or more trust that Creative
> Commons on this front.

Very well.

However, consider the hypothetical where the FSF published the
CC-BY-SA license *as the GFDL 2.0*, word-for-word.  Would your trust
in the FSF allow you to accept the FSF's trust in Creative Commons?
There is negligible moral difference between that scenario and what is
actually being discussed.  Unless the talks break down (which they
always might), a future version of the GFDL and the CC-BY-SA license
will have identical or functionally identical texts.  This will not
require the FSF to change its principles one iota.  Would you still be
raising all these objections then?