[Foundation-l] Requirements for a strong copyleft license

Sun Dec 2 19:35:08 UTC 2007

Anthony wrote:
> On Dec 1, 2007 8:22 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>   
>> * IMPORTANT - I believe it should allow mixing of similar licenses,
>> e.g. CC-BY-SA into BSD -- the Definition of Free Cultural Works
>> endorsed by Wikimedia could be a guideline as to which licenses can be
>> mixed: http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
>>     
> Can't you already mix a copyleft license (like GFDL) with a free
> non-copyleft license (like BSD), so long as the combined work is
> released under the copyleft license?  If so, this would only be useful
> for mixing with other copyleft licenses, which is arguably not all
> that important (especially once the wiki-world migrates away from the
> GFDL), and can be accomplished by dual/multi-licensing (if the
> author(s) desire(s)) anyway.
What I've consistently disliked about any kind of dual licensing is what 
to do when the licences disagree.  That is not always readily apparent, 
and in the vast majority of cases won't matter.  By the time someone's 
work has gone through several generations of re-use he may find that 
liberties have been taken with it that were never part of his original 
grant of licence.

Ec