[Foundation-l] What's wrong with CC-BY-SA?

Tue Dec 4 00:33:10 UTC 2007

Erik Moeller wrote:
> The clauses are highly similar in nature. And they are ambiguous; it
> is not clear whether a photograph in an article is "separate and
> independent" from the article text. Again, a license that establishes
> clarity on this is needed; it doesn't help us to argue that the GFDL
> _is_ clear on this (it isn't, and our practice contradicts your
> interpretation), and it doesn't help us to attack Creative Commons
> because their interpretation of similar language is different from the
> FSF's.

The interpretation publicly given by the license's author would probably 
have some weight in court, though. So isn't entirely irrelevant in 
practice, despite the textual similarity of the licenses. Mainly, the 
fact that Creative Commons gives a weaker "official" interpretation of 
their license than the FSF does of theirs would tend to make it harder 
to enforce cc-by-sa as a strong-copyleft license in court. It might also 
turn out not to be possible to enforce the GFDL in that manner, but at 
least you aren't hampered from the get-go by the license author coming 
in against you and saying, "no, that's not what our license says at all!".

-Mark