[Foundation-l] Two questions about the licensing update of media files

Tue Aug 4 17:30:47 UTC 2009

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Michael Snow<wikipedia at verizon.net> wrote:
> [snip]
>   
>> I cannot fathom why you would limit media to being released only under
>> the GFDL unless it was designed specifically for incorporation into a
>> GFDL work. It's a documentation license, not a media license, and when
>> applied to radically different contexts it will still be free in the
>> dogmatic sense, but it may no longer be all that useful.
>>     
> Because, unfortunately, representatives of Creative Commons have
> asserted that CC-By-Sa licensed media can integrated as a whole
> integrated into non-free works, producing a result which is not freely
> licensed. In other words— that the cc-by-sa copyleft is nearly moot in
> the context of images since they tend to be either incorporated
> verbatim or subject to only trivial non-copyright deserving
> modifications even when the the resulting work as a whole clearly
> builds upon the illustration and isn't merely a collection of separate
> things.
>
> The license text itself appears to be reasonably explicit on this
> matter—  but I feel it would be unethical to use CC-By-SA when doing
> so would cause me to end up litigating against people who were merely
> following, in good faith, what they believe to be authoritative
> advice.
I don't think I'd be so quick to blame Creative Commons for this, 
regardless of the advice they've given. It seems like most people 
reusing copyleft materials in good faith do so without fully 
understanding the concept, advice or no advice. I've seen plenty of GFDL 
material combined with other works in this way as well, even when as you 
say, the whole clearly builds upon the original rather than being a 
collection of works that can stand independently. It's a bad practice 
and a major educational challenge for free licenses, but I don't find it 
that closely related to the issue of choosing a free license in the 
first place.

--Michael Snow