On 31/03/2017, David Hendricks david.hendricks@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 10:20 AM, Sam Kuper sam.kuper@uclmail.net wrote:
Also, to further address Patrick's point above about marketing material: it is important that the provenance of information about Coreboot can be established. This is a reputational matter. That means it is important that people should not legally be able to misrepresent Coreboot contributors' views, etc,
Both CC-BY and CC-BY-SA have "no endorsement" clauses
Yes, but because CC BY imposes no restrictions on *second*-derivative works, it is powerless to prevent such works from claiming endorsement (or, indeed, to prevent them from claiming whatever they please).[2]
and the source of derived materials will still be easily traced back to coreboot.org (or archive.org or wherever).
Not necessarily, and especially not if no attributions are included (which, again, could well be the case with second-derivative works if the wiki used CC BY licensing instead of CC BY-SA).
or claim Coreboot contributors' work as their own.
Both BY and BY-SA licenses require attribution.
Yes, but again, because first derivatives of CC BY works are not required to share alike, second-derivatives of CC BY works are not necessarily required to provide attribution.
[1] How so? Because a licensee who creates a derivative work of a CC BY-licensed work can license that derivative under terms (e.g. CC-0) that would allow *their* licensees do potentially misattribute or otherwise create reputational risk without fear of breaching licensing terms.
Section 3.A.4 of the BY license covers that: "If You Share Adapted Material You produce, the Adapter's License You apply must not prevent recipients of the Adapted Material from complying with this Public License."
So distributing a derived work with a different license does not nullify the original terms.
I believe you have misinterpreted that clause. Specifically, you have, I think, mistakenly interpreted "must not prevent recipients of the Adapted Material from complying" as meaning "must require recipients of the Adapted Material to comply".
Regards.
[2] For purely illustrative purposes, suppose the original work comprised "Foo Bar Baz Quux." (That is obviously too short and unoriginal to be copyrightable, but this is just an illustration, so replace it, in your imagination, with a substantial and convincing copyrightable work.) Suppose it is copyright Alice, and Alice publishes it under CC BY 3.0 on an obscure, low-traffic wiki, hoping to capture the public's imagination and gain support for her cause.
Suppose Bob, in good faith, creates a legitimate derivative work comprising "Fol Bal Bal Quul." Bob publishes this in an obscure, offline newsletter, under a CC-0 license, noting in a footer that it is an adaptation of Alice's CC BY 3.0 work, and providing the URL to the original. He sends a copy to Alice.
Mallory, a malfeasor, spots Bob's newsletter in a cafe. She smells opportunity. She creates a derivative of Bob's piece, comprising "Quul Bal Bal Fol." Mallory publishes this under her own name, claiming authorship (as she is entitled to do, under CC-0). It is extremely successful, and Mallory is widely given credit, even though in truth Mallory could never have come up with it by herself. This is extremely hurtful to Alice, because she finds the message "Quul Bal Bal Fol" extremely distasteful, and it means nothing like "Foo Bar Baz Quux", even though she can see that it was ultimately based upon her original work. Unfortunately, it is too late: Mallory has captured the public's imagination. Almost everyone who might originally have been interested in Alice's message are instead distracted by Mallory's vision. Whole businesses put their weight behind "Quul Bal Bal Fol", even though it is deeply inferior to "Foo Bar Baz Quux", because they never heard about "Foo Bar Baz Quux". Mallory earns a fortune from "Quul Bal Bal Fol". People searching the web for "Quul Bal Bal Fol" never find "Foo Bar Baz Quux" in their search results, because it is just different enough to rank poorly compared to all the publicity received by "Quul Bal Bal Fol". And because Mallory's work was legitimately derived from Bob's CC-0 work, Alice cannot readily sue Mallory for a breach of license, and has, essentially, no sure recourse whatsoever.
(Replace "Alice" with "Coreboot" in the above, and you can, I hope, see why I dislike the idea of Coreboot adopting a CC BY license.)