Creative Commons

NSK nsk2 at wikinerds.org
Mon Oct 18 19:25:39 UTC 2004


Hi,

I would like to know the FSF/FSFE's position on Creative Commons 
( http://www.creativecommons.org ) and how the CC-by-sa 2.0 license (which is 
copyleft) compares with GFDL 1.2 for text works.

I know GFDL and CC-by-sa are not compatible, but I am interested to know the 
differences and similarities of these licenses (for books/articles and 
software) according to your views.

I am aware that with GFDL each distributor who distributes many copies of a 
GFDL document must also distribute the GFDL license. With CC, such action is 
not necessary if the distributer just gives an Internet link to the CC 
homepage. I think that the "relaxed" terms of CC on the license distribution 
could be a problem if, for example, the CC website goes down, but I also 
think that sometimes it might be difficult for someone to distribute the gfdl 
if, for example, he/she just wants to distribute a very short gfdl article. 
In addition, I see that some people don't like the idea of having to keep a 
changelog as gfdl requires, and they seem to prefer the more lightweight cc.

In my site (a wiki) I am about to allow per-page copyright terms so that each 
author can decide between gfdl and cc. (only the sharealike copyleft 
version). However I would like to know FSF's views on CC before proceeding to 
allowing more widespread use of CC. Does CC (the copyleft version) 
effectively protect works released under it?

I would like to ask, also, whether a document licensed under CC-by 2.0 
(CreativeCommons Attribution license 2.0) can be incorporated in a GFDL text 
(provided that proper attribution will be included in the text).

Finally, I wish to know whether you are considering to provide some form of 
compatibility between CC and GFDL in the future (for example with a gfdl2 
license)?

Thanks,
-- 
NSK
Personal page at http://nsk.wikinerds.org
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
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