[Foundation-l] Licenses' biodiversity : my big disagreement with the Wikimedia usability initiative's software specifications

[David Gerard]

On 18 February 2011 13:41, Teofilo <teofilowiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> Having a choice of possible licenses is a richness. Because specific
> licenses might be more suitable to some specific needs than other
> licenses. Because they don't offer the same sort of protection in a
> variety of circumstances. Destroying licenses looks as bad as
> destroying biological species. Biodiversity is needed.


No, I think you're dead wrong there. Gratuitous licence proliferation
is bad because it reduces interoperability and hence reusability. This
has been observed repeatedly in the world of open source software; for
you to claim that a proliferation of incompatible licences is a good
thing in the world of free content, you would need to supply more than
the mere assertions you provide here. Anything more than a continuum
of PD <-> CC-by (equiv) <-> CC-by-sa needs *very good* justification.
Steering people to one of those three by preferences is absolutely the
right thing to do as it maximises reusability.


- d.