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

Teofilo teofilowiki at gmail.com
Sat Feb 19 11:08:25 UTC 2011


2011/2/18 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
> 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.

I am talking about biodiversity. You are talking like Monsanto who
wants all the farmers on earth to use the same seeds.



More information about the foundation-l mailing list