On 01.04.2017 01:39, Sam Kuper wrote:
On 31/03/2017, Nico Huber nico.h@gmx.de wrote:
On 31.03.2017 23:38, Sam Kuper wrote:
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,
[...] I'm not convinced. Relicensing adapted work under different conditions would require the explicit permission by the copyright holder.
No, it wouldn't. That's what makes CC BY different from CC BY-SA.
So it changes copyright itself? We should stop this. IANAL, and I sup- pose you aren't either.
I appreciate that you started this discussion. Having a license for our documentation is really something we should have paid more attention to. Discussing implications of particular licenses, however, is OT here. If you really doubt the usefulness of CC BY, please take that to CC.
(And I think you mean "licensing" rather than "relicensing", assuming we are both talking about the first time that the *adapted work* is licensed to the public.)
No, I meant relicensing. If you license adapted work you "relicense" the parts which you don't have the copyright for.
And I can't find that permission in CC BY.
See, especially, §1(a), §1(c), §1(h), §3(b), §3(d), and §4(b): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
Seriously, I ask for a single thing and you want me to search the answer in six places?
Nico
On 01/04/2017, Nico Huber nico.h@gmx.de wrote:
On 01.04.2017 01:39, Sam Kuper wrote:
On 31/03/2017, Nico Huber nico.h@gmx.de wrote:
On 31.03.2017 23:38, Sam Kuper wrote:
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,
[...] I'm not convinced. Relicensing adapted work under different conditions would require the explicit permission by the copyright holder.
No, it wouldn't. That's what makes CC BY different from CC BY-SA.
So it changes copyright itself?
Absolutely not!
Like any such license, it relies on copyright law to grant the *recipient of the licensed work* certain rights (a.k.a. freedoms). I'll explain this in more detail in the next few paragraphs, but before that, here's a tl;dr right up front.
<BEGIN TL;DR>
Read the "human-readable summaries" of CC BY and CC BY-SA, and spot the difference:
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
<END TL;DR>
In the case of both CC BY and CC BY-SA, the rights granted to the *recipient of the licensed work* include the freedom to create adaptations and to distribute or publicly perform them, subject *only* to a small list of restrictions. CC BY has a shorter list of restrictions than CC BY-SA.
CC BY-SA's list of restrictions includes a restriction on the license under which an adapted work can be distributed or publicly performed. See §4.b "only under the terms of: (i) this License; (ii) a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License; (iii) a Creative Commons jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version) that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g., Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 US)); (iv) a Creative Commons Compatible License."
CC BY's list of restrictions does not include such a restriction.
As such, CC BY grants the creator of an adapted work the freedom to publicly performed or distribute that adapted work under a different license.
(Put in more traditional terms, CC BY-SA is a copyleft license; CC BY is a permissive license.)
And I can't find that permission in CC BY.
See, especially, §1(a), §1(c), §1(h), §3(b), §3(d), and §4(b): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
Seriously, I ask for a single thing and you want me to search the answer in six places?
I was trying to be helpful. I did not write the license, and I am not responsible for how it is laid out. Don't shoot the messenger. Read those clauses, and they'll basically answer your concern without you having to read the rest of the license.
Alternatively, read the whole license; it is commendably short. Or, just compare the "human-readable summary" of CC BY 3.0 with that of CC BY-SA 3.0, as suggested in my TL;DR above.
If you really doubt the usefulness of CC BY, please take that to CC.
I don't doubt its usefulness. I do, however, severely doubt that it is a wise choice for the Coreboot wiki content.
I think it is a great license for a creator who only cares about receiving attribution for some work itself and for first derivatives of that work, and who is fine with provenance and credit disappearing or mutating after that. Such people do exist. (If I were writing a throwaway piece - maybe a poem or a song - and I liked the thought of pieces of it being adapted and then adapted again, such that my adapters' adapters wouldn't have to credit me, I might be tempted to use CC BY.)
(And I think you mean "licensing" rather than "relicensing", assuming we are both talking about the first time that the *adapted work* is licensed to the public.)
No, I meant relicensing. If you license adapted work you "relicense" the parts which you don't have the copyright for.
Respectfully, I think you are still mistaken about this. "Relicensing" describes a new license is applied to a work (i.e. without the work needing to be altered). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relicensing .
In the case of an adapted work, alteration has necessarily occurred, so when a license is applied to the *adapted work* for the first time, that is not a relicensing. Moreover, this license would apply to the entire *adapted work*, not just to parts of it.
I appreciate that you started this discussion.
Thank you. I appreciate your work on Coreboot. (And while I'm expressing appreciation: I also very much appreciate the effort that Coreboot volunteers have put into the wiki over the years.)
Having a license for our documentation is really something we should have paid more attention to.
Absolutely.
Discussing implications of particular licenses, however, is OT here.
Not really. I started this thread precisely to address the problem that the Coreboot wiki's content is under no clear license. That would be a legal risk for any wiki, or for any free software project. In Coreboot's case, it is also a concern for me, as a contributor to the wiki, as a user of the software, and as a free software advocate generally (because Coreboot is so fundamental in the free software stack). I don't want Coreboot to face legal or reputational risk, or malevolent co-option, or incompatibility with other collaborative works, because of a failure to put a suitable license in place. I care about this, and I'm trying to catalyse a robust solution.
It is right and proper that Coreboot participants should discuss the merits of potential licenses for Coreboot wiki content, and the Coreboot mailing list is a perfectly reasonable place to do that. I hope we all have enough netiquette to confine the bulk of the discussion to a single thread (this one), so that anyone who doesn't want to follow it can mute this thread and proceed undisturbed.
Discussing the merits of potential licenses for Coreboot wiki content necessarily involves clarifying the implications of those licenses for that content and for the project, especially where misunderstandings exist, as is the case here in relation to CC BY.
Regards.
-
Nico Huber -
Sam Kuper