[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Mon May 31 06:28:50 UTC 2004

>I have been put words in my mouth here that I never said. I was only
>reacting to Mav who claimed that free meant copyleft, thus claiming
>that CC-BY or PD is _not_ free, or at least _less_ free than copyleft.
>NEVER did I claim that copyleft was NOT free. All I claimed was that
>things that are NOT copyleft can still be free.

I am not sure which words you mean.

You did NOT say that a copyleft licence like CC-by-sa or GNU FDL is NOT free,
but you DID say that such a licence is LESS free than CC-by.
At least I'm pretty sure that you said this, as follows:

>>>"You may do with it what you want, provided you mention my name" is
>>>more free than "You may do with it what you want, provided you mention
>>>my name and give others the same rights and obligations".

In other words, CC-by is more free than CC-by-sa.

And I agree with you!

The FSF, as far as I can tell, would not agree with you and me,
because they draw a strict line between "free" and "not free".
They (or at least RMS) see the issue in black and white, no grey.
Thus I wrote of the FSF:

>>They would say that CC-by and GNU FDL ''are'' free, period.

(Here, "period" -- or "full stop" -- has a colloquial meaning
which implies that there is nothing further to be said on the matter.)

This is in contrast to what I would say (and what I think that you said above),
which is more nuanced:

>>GNU FDL and CC-by-sa are more free than an unlicensed copyright,
>>and CC-by is more free than GNU FDL and CC-by-sa.
[I paraphrased the original a great deal here.]

(I should also mention that I may be being unfair to to the FSF here.
For one thing, the FSF isn't the same this thing as Richard Stallman;
there are many, many members of the FSF -- including me, after all.
And RMS's position may be more nuanced than what I'm getting
from reading his stuff on the GNU web site.)

Mav's position, as he is stating it, is more extreme (and simply wrong IMO),
since he is claiming (I believe) that a noncopyleft licence like CC-sa
is not free to begin with.  Still, mav does have a point, as I said here:

>>There are ''reasons'' for each of the restrictions,
>>including reasons that the restrictions may increase freedom overall.
[I've corrected a typographical error in the original here.]

So mav can reasonably argue (along with the FSF) that a copyleft licence
increases freedom overall, because it enforces freedom for derivative works.
But it does not increase the freedom of the ''original'' document --
as even the FSF would agree -- and could only decrease ''that'' freedom.
(And that was your point, Andre, which I agree with.)

-- Toby