On 21/03/2017, Martin Roth gaumless@gmail.com wrote:
Hey Sam. You're absolutely right, and I appreciate you pointing this out. We need to get this fixed. Actually, as part of coreboot joining the Software Freedom Conservancy, our documentation NEEDS an open license of one sort or another.
Thanks, Martin. Good to know I'm not barking in the dark.
Is there a reason we shouldn't switch to CC BY 4.0?
Arguably, yes: doing so would permit the use of Coreboot wiki material in proprietary works, which some wiki contributors might be opposed to.
It would also prevent importing material from Wikipedia or Stack Exchange into the Coreboot wiki.
CC BY 4.0 is a free culture license, though, and would definitely be better than no license at all :)
- Do we really need BY-SA?
Strictly speaking, no; but see above.
How much of the coreboot documentation is applicable anywhere else?
That remains to be seen. As Coreboot grows in popularity, its documentation is likely to be more widely applicable.
Why not just go with the least restrictive license?
See above.
- Do we really care what Stack Exchange or any other group is using?
How much are we copying from them?
At the moment, I don't know of any Coreboot wiki content that was copied from SE or Wikipedia. This is probably just as well, because such material would be in breach of its license ;)
But as Coreboot becomes more popular, the likelihood increases that someone might post an answer on SE, or a description on Wikipedia, that is good enough that it is worth including it (either verbatim or appropriately edited) in the Coreboot wiki. For such inclusion to be possible, the Coreboot wiki's license obviously needs to be compatible with SE's license and Wikipedia's license.
Here are the CC licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Discussion of CC BY-SA vs GFDL :https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/GFDL_versus_CC-by-sa
As an aside: it is certainly possible in principle to dual-license (or even triple-license, etc) the Coreboot wiki's content. So, Coreboot could, for instance, decide to use CC BY-SA 3.0 *and* GFDL, with the licensee allowed to choose whichever they prefer. On the plus side, this would avoid the community having to choose between them (i.e. it avoids the "versus" aspect of the discussion you linked to). On the down side, it would prevent bi-directional compatibility with SE, as I pointed out here: https://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2017-March/083614.html .
Once we decide which license to switch to, I think we're going to have to remove or rewrite any documentation contributions from people who don't want to agree to the license or who can't be reached.
Agreed: I can't see any way around that, sadly.
-
Sam Kuper