[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Tue Jun 1 00:56:26 UTC 2004

--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> No, ''that'' doesn't decrease the freedom of the document --
> it's other effects of the copyleft that do so.
> 
> I'll give a specific (albeit still hypothetical) example:
> 
> Suppose that there are two free documents that I like,
> one of which uses the GNU FDL licence, one of which uses CC-by-sa.
> I want to combine these two free documents into a single modified one.
> Even though both of them are supposed to be free, I can't do this!
> But if either of these documents uses the noncopyleft CC-by instead,
> then I am able to do what I want to do with the documents.
> The CC-by licence is more free; it gives me more freedoms.

Yes, but that deals with the freedom of your use, not the freedom of the
content since the CC-by text could just as easily be made into a proprietary
derivative work while the FDL and CC-by/sa text can only ever be libre (at
least until their copyright expires, which if Disney has its say will be
never). Fixing the compatibility issue is a major problem that must be
corrected, however. 

Correcting that is my plan A since it has the largest payoff in the end (a
world in which the best representation of knowledge is not controllable). Using
a license of convenience in the interim would be a bad idea since works under
that license will not be copyleft, thus making derivative works of them
susceptible to proprietary control. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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