[Licom-l] Document review - motivation for the license change

Wed Mar 18 17:18:24 UTC 2009

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 9:42 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
<snip>
> It's not clear to me whether the text should have a neutral point of
> view on whether to change the license, or whether it should advocate
> for the change.  The Trustees clearly desired change of some sort,
> and this change is what has been worked out so far.  Do we have any
> naysayers in the committee, who can seek to represent some common
> reasons why people would vote "No"?

Based on people I've talked to, the most common objection seems to be
that some people feel CC-BY-SA makes it too easy to reuse content
without providing "adequate" attribution to authors.  In particular,
people object to the idea of putting attribution and licensing
information behind a URL since that may be inaccessible offline or
subject to failure is webpages move or die.

We should be open about this.  CC-BY-SA changes the location and
nature of attribution.  Many people seem to view that change as a net
good.  Some view it as a net negative.  Regardless, our basic role is
to explain what the changes are and let the people decide.

-Robert Rohde

-Robert Rohde