Licensing

[Corey Burger]

On 8/9/06, Jeff Schering <jeffschering at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/8/06, Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >
> > I agree that there is nothing wrong with third party publishers using
> > the material commercially, however I think we should impose a
> > share-alike condition, that derivative works remain under the same (or
> > other?) free license.
> >
> > I think the CC-BY-SA works fine. Using an existing license also means
> > that we get the benefit of much hard work gone into testing the license.
> > A single license would also mean that we can use other compatible
> > material (hopefully the wiki licensing will be sorted out and it is
> > possible it will use something similar, and the forum uses this license
> > too).
> >
>
> I think we have two options if we use the Creative Commons Public
> License (CCPL). They are: Attribution (cc-by), and
> Attribution-ShareAlike (cc-by-sa).
>
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/legalcode
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/legalcode
>
> The cc-by license only requires that people who use the original work
> must make sure that the original authors are credited in the manner
> specified by the original authors.
>
> The cc-by-sa license is identical, except for an additional paragraph
> which includes the following sentence: "You may not distribute,
> publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the
> Derivative Work with any technological measures that control access or
> use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this
> License Agreement."
>
> That sentence seems mostly aimed at making sure that derivative works
> are not made proprietary. For example, a bit of music can't be copied
> then released in an encrypted format or with DRM etc. The cc-by
> license allows that to happen.
>
> In essence, the cc-by license is Public Domain + Attribution. It
> allows your work to be used in any way, including as a "closed,"
> proprietary work, provided you get credited as the author.
>
> Neither the cc-by nor the cc-by-sa license require people who use the
> original work in a collective work to place that collective work under
> the CCPL or equivalent free license. They only require that the
> original work carry the original cc-by-sa license and proper author
> attribution.
>
> Also, both cc-by and cc-by-sa explicitly allow linking to the license
> as an alternative to including it in a document.
>
> I think the cc-by-sa license is the one we should go with. It's the
> one used by the forums. It doesn't allow our work to become closed.
> Also, it's easier to understand and implement than the FDL.

I like this as well. Especially given the book is solely cc-by-sa (2.0
not 2.5 afaik).

Corey