[coreboot] Coreboot wiki: what license is the content under?

[Sam Kuper]

On 21/03/2017, Martin Roth <gaumless at 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.