Re: simplest copyleft license for a wiki
Alex Schroeder <alex@emacswiki.org> writes:
>> But even then, you're going to have two problems: consider, for example,
>> the "BSD Preservation License" -- it's a copyleft which prohibits any
>> use of copyleft licenses in conjunction with the work, so the ability
>> to derive commercial works is always preserved. Is that something you
>> want to count as a copyleft?
>
> Hm, maybe that is up to the courts to decide. It doesn't look like a
> copyleft to me, but that's just my first impression. I'm used to this
> definition from the FSF site:
>
> Copyleft is a general method for making a program free software
> and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to
> be free software as well.
>
> Can you point me to an URL with the license text? I didn't find it
> with Google.
Shoot, I was afraid I was misremembering the name. It came up on
Debian-Legal recently, but the list archives are exceptionally down at
the moment.
>> Also consider that derivative works under the GFDL or GPL will not be
>> mergeable with the root: those changes won't be useful to you.
>
> We know this and accept the problem. At the moment the FDL presents
> similar problems, however, since when a page gets into the Emacs
> manual, and is edited there, we cannot take it back without copying
> all the invariants from the Emacs manual, and adding these to the
> blurbs we have at various places on the wiki.
It's worse than that: not only would you need to copy all the
invariant sections in, you'd have to remove the sections you'd
received only under the GPL, and license your work only under the
GFDL. This is what I meant about the general incompatibility of
copyleft licenses.
>> 2. Most copyleft licenses are not compatible with each other, because
>> they treat the requirements of the other license as non-free.
>> Because you're writing mostly about Emacs, I'd suggest sticking
>> with something GPL compatible, so you can have source code
>> trivially on the Wiki: that limits you pretty much to the GPL or
>> MIT/X11 licenses.
>
> This is where our problems already start, because the wiki contains
> both text and code, so perhaps we'd need both the GPL and the FDL and
> then my head starts hurting again... :)
There's no reason not to put both code and text under the GPL -- it
works fine for several other projects. Much of my own text is under
the GPL, for example.
> So I guess the only big issue in this posting is the question of
> whether "Any copyleft license" is "not appropriate for a legal
> document." If I really need more precise (and complex) wording, then
> maybe I will stick to the XEmacs manual license which is longer, but
> copyleft enough for me. That would be something along these lines:
>
> # Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
> these pages provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
> are preserved on all copies.
>
> # Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of
> these pages under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that
> the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of
> a permission notice identical to this one.
>
> # Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of these
> pages into another language, under the above conditions for modified
> versions.
>
> The drawbacks of the above list of three items is that it doesn't
> mention the preferred form for making modifications, and it doesn't
> mention the permission to upgrade to other such licenses. Oh well.
It's also incompatible with all other copyleft licenses. Others have
tried to write licenses which said "You can combine this with any free
work" before -- it's very hard, probably impossible to do right.
I think your best bet is to pick a broadly accepted free license -- a
copyleft, if that's what you want -- and put everything under that.
-Brian
--
Brian T. Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
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