Re: simplest copyleft license for a wiki
Alex Schroeder <alex@emacswiki.org>:
> I'm looking for some advice concerning the wording of the following
> license. The goal is to keep this license as short as possible while
> still making it a copyleft license upgradable to any of the other
> licenses.
The idea sounds all right, but I find it easy to find faults in the
wording:
> 1. You have the right to copy, modify, and/or distribute the work.
I don't know what "and/or" means, but I find it hard to imagine a
definition of "and/or" which would make this sentence mean that I have
clear and explicit permission to distribute modified copies.
This right is obviously supposed to be subject to the conditions that
follow.
> 2. You must grant recipients the same rights.
Same as what? If it's supposed to mean same as the conditions
expressed by this numbered list of 6 items, then this is contradicted
by item 6, because item 6 lets you replace the licence by any of a
number of licences which are not all equivalent to each other.
> 3. You must inform recipients of their rights.
You have the right to remain silent ... :-)
> 4. When you distribute the work, you must provide the recipients
> access to the preferred form for making copies and
> modifications, for no more than your costs of doing so.
>
> 5. Recipients must place identical restrictions on derivative
> works.
Identical to what? See my comment for item 2.
> 6. You may change the license to any other copyleft licsense such
> as the GPL, GFDL, CC SA, or the XEmacs manual license.
I'm not sure that the term "copyleft" is sufficiently well known to be
used like this.
The only thing in this licence that gives me confidence that a work
licensed under it is unambiguously free is the possibility of changing
it to the GPLv2, so, although I like the idea of a simpler copyleft
licence than the GPL, and I've tried to create one myself on
occasions, as far as I'm concerned you might as well have just used
the GPL.
Apart from its length, what don't you like about the GPL? Your goal
might be better served by writing something like: "This work is
licensed to you under version 2 of the GNU General Public License. In
addition, you have permission to ..."
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