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

[Sam Kuper]

On 31/03/2017, Timothy Pearson <tpearson at raptorengineering.com> wrote:
> On 03/31/2017 11:17 AM, Sam Kuper wrote:
>> On 30/03/2017, Patrick Georgi via coreboot <coreboot at coreboot.org> wrote:
>>> I'd go with CC-BY for the simple reason that documentation acts as
>>> marketing material which should see the widest distribution possible.
>>
>> This does not make sense to me. CC BY-SA would not hinder distribution
>> of documentation.
>
> Documentation, on the other hand, is designed for public consumption and
> is generally a thankless chore for developers who would much rather be
> adding new features to the software than writing things they already
> know down.  Perhaps the knowledge that someone's name will be attached
> in perpetuity to the documentation they write might just motivate
> creation of more material?

Exactly. Which is one of several reasons why I think CC BY-SA would be
better for Coreboot than CC BY would be.

(My understanding, based upon your email above, and upon your first
reply in this thread, is that you agree with me. Thanks again for
caring about this!)

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, or claim Coreboot contributors'
work as their own. Sure, there are, in some jurisdictions, protections
against that sort of thing besides licensing provisions, but licensing
provisions can help in this regard. CC BY-SA provides much better
protection on this front than CC BY does[1] which means, in my view,
that even from a purely marketing perspective, CC BY-SA soundly beats
CC BY.

Regards.

[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.