[Foundation-l] The license situation

[geni]

2008/10/19 Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> 2008/10/18 geni <geniice at gmail.com>:
>> Hard vs soft copyleft
>
> The actual text of the GFDL and CC-BY-SA is not substantially
> different with regard to the copyleft of adaptations. The official
> position of Creative Commons on this issue is reflected in the
> statement of intent regarding the CC-BY-SA license:
>
> http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC_Attribution-ShareAlike_Intent
>
> I don't think there's any basis on which to argue that Creative
> Commons Intent is substantially different from the FSF's with the
> GFDL, and this statement explicitly promises that CC-BY-SA will never
> be re-worded to have a "softer" copyleft.

So CC are saying that they may chose to drift towards harder copyleft
but may equally chose not to. That is not an equivalent of a hard
copyleft position.

> That said, we've been continuing the dialog with CC about how to build
> a more explicit hard copyleft. I strongly believe that a  strong
> copyleft option for photography needs to exist, but to me, this is a
> separate problem. The GFDL doesn't solve this, and as has been pointed
> out here before, the current beliefs and practices (some people
> believe that combinations of any kind need to be copyleft, but we mix
> GFDL text with content under different licenses) are inherently
> contradictory. A solution addressing this problem explicitly is
> needed.
>
> Creative Commons is not at all opposed to such a solution. My
> preferred "fix" at this point is a CC-BY-SA 3.1 version which
> explicitly invokes copyleft for scenarios of semantic embedding, but
> where copyleft is taken to mean "combine with a work under any license
> that's compliant with the Definition of Free Cultural Works", as
> opposed to "the exact same license".

I prefer to deal with at least proposed license texts that have
actually been written. What CC are or are not opposed to is secondary
to what they are actually doing or are committed to doing. For the
time being we cannot assume that CC will move their SA license any
close to hard copyleft than they have already done. Of course not
everyone will view this as a problem. There is a fair degree of
support for soft copyleft in some areas.

>
>> the GFDL 1.2 only images
>> People who uploaded images under the GFDL because it's clumsiness
>> makes conventional commercial use tricky.
>
> I don't see how this relates to the re-licensing language in GFDL 1.3.

No idea I haven't seen it. Which is another problem. I'm sure you are
doing you best but how many actually active in the field people do you
have who have seen this thing?

-- 
geni