[Textbook-l] problems with the GNU FDL

Mon Jul 14 01:27:10 UTC 2003

>What problems are you seeing with the GFDL that the
"Creative Commons" 
>license (which I'm not familiar with) would solve?

The main problem I see with the GNU FDL as it stands is
that it demands that any work that uses any of its content
must be released under the same GNU FDL license. However
there are other open content licences out there that people
will be using. So, if some day down the road anyone wants
to mix content from a Creative Commons license or any other
license at all, the work must be released under the GNU
license. So any work I do on a textbook will be limited to
only GNU versions. 

It would be as if the work wereforever condemned to be  in
its own, propietary format, 100% incompatable with all
other sources and licenses, including all other open
content licenses that I am familiar with.

This will be very inconvenient to Sanford Forte of the 
California Open Source Textbook Project and may make any
work we do for his project unusable unless he and all his
people are willing to release everything under the GNU FDL
license.

It is also very inconvenient for me because any work that I
do under the GNU FDL on the wiki is only mine to use under
another license as long as noone else makes any
modification at all to it that I keep. So if I wanted to
release my own work under another, more flexible license, I
would have to go thru the work of eliminating every letter
that wasnt my own. This is hardly the spirit underlying
open content.

Remember that the GNU FDL was created for software, not
open content. And remember that even RMS says that it may
not be the ideal license for open content.

One solution I see would be to create a special version of
the GNU FDL just for open content, or just for Wikipedia.
That way we could decide for ourselves without needing the
rest of the GNU world to go along with it. Or, adapting
another license like one of the Creative Commons ones.
Thats the only way I see that will prevent eternal,
unmixable forks of content.

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